Re: [PATCH 0/1] KVM: x86/vPMU: Speed up vmexit for AMD Zen 4 CPUs

Sean Christopherson
2023-11-10T00:52:09Z

On Thu, Nov 09, 2023, Jim Mattson wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 9, 2023 at 3:42 PM Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 09, 2023, Jim Mattson wrote:
> > > A better solution may be to maintain two bitmaps of general purpose
> > > counters that need to be incremented, one for instructions retired and
> > > one for branch instructions retired. Set or clear these bits whenever
> > > the PerfEvtSelN MSRs are written. I think I would keep the PGC bits
> > > separate, on those microarchitectures that support PGC. Then,
> > > kvm_pmu_trigger_event() need only consult the appropriate bitmap (or
> > > the logical and of that bitmap with PGC). In most cases, the value
> > > will be zero, and the function can simply return.
> > >
> > > This would work even for AMD microarchitectures that don't support PGC.
> >
> > Yeah. There are multiple lower-hanging fruits to be picked though, most of which
> > won't conflict with using dedicated per-event bitmaps, or at worst are trivial
> > to resolve.
> >
> > 1. Don't call into perf to get the eventsel (which generates an indirect call)
> > on every invocation, let alone every iteration.
> >
> > 2. Avoid getting the CPL when it's irrelevant.
> >
> > 3. Check the eventsel before querying the event filter.
> >
> > 4. Mask out PMCs that aren't globally enabled from the get-go (masking out
> > PMCs based on eventsel would essentially be the same as per-event bitmaps).
>
> The code below only looks at PGC. Even on CPUs that support PGC, some
> PMU clients still use the enable bits in the PerfEvtSelN. Linux perf,
> for instance, can't seem to make up its mind whether to use PGC or
> PerfEvtSelN.EN.

Ugh, as in perf leaves all GLOBAL_CTRL bits set and toggles only the eventsel
enable bit? Lame.

> > I'm definitely not opposed to per-event bitmaps, but it'd be nice to avoid them,
> > e.g. if we can eke out 99% of the performance just by doing a few obvious
> > optimizations.
> >
> > This is the end result of what I'm testing and will (hopefully) post shortly:
> >
> > static inline bool pmc_is_eventsel_match(struct kvm_pmc *pmc, u64 eventsel)
> > {
> > return !((pmc->eventsel ^ eventsel) & AMD64_RAW_EVENT_MASK_NB);
> > }
>
> The top nybble of AMD's 3-nybble event select collides with Intel's
> IN_TX and IN_TXCP bits. I think we can assert that the vCPU can't be
> in a transaction if KVM is emulating an instruction, but this probably
> merits a comment.

Argh, more pre-existing crud. This is silly, the vendor mask is already in
kvm_pmu_ops.EVENTSEL_EVENT. What's one more patch...

> The function name should also be more descriptive, so that it doesn't get
> misused out of context. :)

Heh, I think I'll just delete the darn thing. That also makes it easier to
understand the comment about ignoring certain fields.