Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] KVM: SVM: Advertise Translation Cache Extensions to userspace

Venkatesh Srinivas
2026-03-09T22:53:36Z

On Fri, Mar 6, 2026 at 5:54 PM Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Venkatesh Srinivas <venkateshs@chromium.org>
> >
> > TCE augments the behavior of TLB invalidating instructions (INVLPG,
> > INVLPGB, and INVPCID) to only invalidate translations for relevant
> > intermediate mappings to the address range, rather than ALL intermdiate
> > translations.
> >
> > The Linux kernel has been setting EFER.TCE if supported by the CPU since
> > commit 440a65b7d25f ("x86/mm: Enable AMD translation cache extensions"),
> > as it may improve performance.
> >
> > KVM does not need to do anything to virtualize the feature, only
> > advertise it and allow setting EFER.TCE. If a TLB invalidating
> > instruction is not intercepted, it will behave according to the guest's
> > setting of EFER.TCE as the value will be loaded on VM-Enter. Otherwise,
> > KVM's emulation may invalidate more TLB entries, which is perfectly fine
> > as the CPU is allowed to invalidate more TLB entries that it strictly
> > needs to.
> >
> > Advertise X86_FEATURE_TCE to userspace, and allow the guest to set
> > EFER.TCE if available.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Srinivas <venkateshs@chromium.org>
> > Co-developed-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@kernel.org>
> > Signed-off-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@kernel.org>
>
> I'll repeat what I said on that referenced patch.
>
> What's the point? AMD have said that TCE doesn't exist any more; it's a
> bit that's no longer wired into anything.
>
> You've got to get to pre-Zen hardware before this has any behavioural
> effect, at which point the breath of testing is almost 0.

Interesting, I missed that. Do you know where AMD said that?
(If so, why did we take 440a65b7d25f ("x86/mm: Enable AMD translation
cache extensions")?)

Thanks,
-- vs;