Re: [PATCH 0/3] KVM: x86: Introduce quirk KVM_X86_QUIRK_EPT_IGNORE_GUEST_PAT

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>]

On 2/24/25 08:07, Yan Zhao wrote:
> This series introduces a quirk KVM_X86_QUIRK_EPT_IGNORE_GUEST_PAT as
> suggested by Paolo and Sean [1].
> 
> The purpose of introducing this quirk is to allow KVM to honor guest PAT on
> Intel platforms with self-snoop feature. This support was previously
> reverted by commit 9d70f3fec144 ("Revert "KVM: VMX: Always honor guest PAT
> on CPUs that support self-snoop"") due to a reported broken of an old bochs
> driver which incorrectly set memory type to UC but did not expect that UC
> would be very slow on certain Intel platforms.

Hi Yan,

the main issue with this series is that the quirk is not disabled only 
for TDX VMs, but for *all* VMs if TDX is available.

There are two concepts here:

- which quirks can be disabled

- which quirks are active

I agree with making the first vendor-dependent, but for a different 
reason: the new KVM_X86_QUIRK_EPT_IGNORE_GUEST_PAT must be hidden if 
self-snoop is not present.

As to the second, we already have an example of a quirk that is also 
active, though we don't represent that in kvm->arch.disabled_quirks: 
that's KVM_X86_QUIRK_CD_NW_CLEARED which is for AMD only and is 
effectively always disabled on Intel platforms.  For those cases, we 
need to expose the quirk anyway in KVM_CAP_DISABLE_QUIRKS2, so that 
userspace knows that KVM is *aware* of a particular issue.  In other 
words, even if disabling it has no effect, userspace may want to know 
that it can rely on the problematic behavior not being present.

I'm testing an alternative series and will post it shortly.

Paolo

> Sean previously suggested to bottom out if the UC slowness issue is working
> as intended so that we can enable the quirk only when the VMs are affected
> by the old unmodifiable guests [2]. After consulting with CPU architects,
> it's told that this behavior is expected on ICX/SPR Xeon platforms due to
> the snooping implementation.
> 
> So, implement the quirk such that KVM enables it by default on all Intel
> non-TDX platforms while having the quirk explicitly reference the old
> unmodifiable guests that rely on KVM to force memory type to WB. Newer
> userspace can disable the quirk by default and only leave it enabled if an
> old unmodifiable guest is an concern.
> 
> The quirk is platform-specific valid, available only on Intel non-TDX
> platforms. It is absent on Intel TDX and AMD platforms, where KVM always
> honors guest PAT.
> 
> Patch 1 does the preparation of making quirks platform-specific valid.
> Patch 2 makes the quirk to be present on Intel and absent on AMD.
> Patch 3 makes the quirk to be absent on Intel TDX and self-snoop a hard
>          dependency to enable TDX [3].
>          As a new platform, TDX is always running on CPUs with self-snoop
>          feature. It has no worry to break old yet unmodifiable guests.
>          Simply have KVM always honor guest PAT on TDX enabled platforms.
>          Attaching/detaching non-coherent DMA devices would not lead to
>          mirrored EPTs being zapped for TDs then. A previous attempt for
>          this purpose is at [4].
> 
> 
> This series is based on kvm-coco-queue. It was supposed to be included in
> TDX's "the rest" section. We post it separately to start review earlier.
> 
> Patches 1 and 2 are changes to the generic code, which can also be applied
> to kvm/queue. A proposal is to have them go into kvm/queue and we rebase on
> that.
> 
> Patch 3 can be included in TDX's "the rest" section in the end.
> 
> Thanks
> Yan
> 
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/CABgObfa=t1dGR5cEhbUqVWTD03vZR4QrzEUgHxq+3JJ7YsA9pA@mail.gmail.com
> [2] https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/Zt8cgUASZCN6gP8H@google.com
> [3] https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/ZuBSNS33_ck-w6-9@google.com
> [4] https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20241115084600.12174-1-yan.y.zhao@intel.com
> 
> 
> Yan Zhao (3):
>    KVM: x86: Introduce supported_quirks for platform-specific valid
>      quirks
>    KVM: x86: Introduce Intel specific quirk
>      KVM_X86_QUIRK_EPT_IGNORE_GUEST_PAT
>    KVM: TDX: Always honor guest PAT on TDX enabled platforms
> 
>   Documentation/virt/kvm/api.rst  | 30 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
>   arch/x86/include/asm/kvm_host.h |  2 +-
>   arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h |  1 +
>   arch/x86/kvm/mmu.h              |  2 +-
>   arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c          | 14 +++++++-----
>   arch/x86/kvm/vmx/main.c         |  1 +
>   arch/x86/kvm/vmx/tdx.c          |  5 +++++
>   arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c          | 39 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++------
>   arch/x86/kvm/x86.c              |  7 +++---
>   arch/x86/kvm/x86.h              | 12 +++++-----
>   10 files changed, 91 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
>