Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] KVM: SEV: Prefer WBNOINVD over WBINVD for cache maintenance efficiency

Sean Christopherson
2025-01-14T16:13:05Z

On Tue, Jan 14, 2025, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 10:47:57AM -0800, Kevin Loughlin wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 12:23 AM Kirill A. Shutemov
> > <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jan 09, 2025 at 10:55:33PM +0000, Kevin Loughlin wrote:
> > > > @@ -710,6 +711,14 @@ static void sev_clflush_pages(struct page *pages[], unsigned long npages)
> > > > }
> > > > }
> > > >
> > > > +static void sev_wb_on_all_cpus(void)

In anticipation of landing the targeted flushing optimizations[*] in the near-ish
future, I would prefer to avoid the "on_all_cpus" aspect of the name.

Maybe sev_writeback_caches(), to kinda sorta pair with sev_clflush_pages()?
Definitely open to other names.

[*] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20240411140445.1038319-1-szy0127@sjtu.edu.cn

> > > > +{
> > > > + if (boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_WBNOINVD))
> > > > + wbnoinvd_on_all_cpus();
> > > > + else
> > > > + wbinvd_on_all_cpus();
> > >
> > > I think the X86_FEATURE_WBNOINVD check should be inside wbnoinvd().
> > > wbnoinvd() should fallback to WBINVD if the instruction is not supported
> > > rather than trigger #UD.
> >
> > I debated this as well and am open to doing it that way. One argument
> > against silently falling back to WBINVD within wbnoinvd() (in general,
> > not referring to this specific case) is that frequent WBINVD can cause
> > soft lockups, whereas WBNOINVD is much less likely to do so. As such,
> > there are potentially use cases where falling back to WBINVD would be
> > undesirable (and would potentially be non-obvious behavior to the
> > programmer calling wbnoinvd()), hence why I left the decision outside
> > wbnoinvd().

Practically speaking, I highly doubt there will ever be a scenario where not
falling back to WBINVD is a viable option. The alternatives I see are:

1. Crash
2. Data Corruption
3. CLFLUSH{OPT}

(1) and (2) are laughably bad, and (3) would add significant complexity in most
situations (to enumerate all addresses), and would be outright impossible in some.

And if someone opts for WBNOINVD, they darn well better have done their homework,
because there should be precious few reasons to need to flush all caches, and as
evidenced by lack of usage in the kernel, even fewer reasons to write back dirty
data while preserving entries. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to put the
onus on future developers to look at the implementation of wbnoinvd() and
understand the implications.

> > That said, open to either way, especially since that "potential" use
> > case doesn't apply here; just lemme know if you still have a strong
> > preference for doing the check within wbnoinvd().
>
> An alternative would be to fail wbnoinvd() with an error code and
> possibly a WARN(). Crash on #UD is not helpful.