Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 1/6] target-arm: kvm: save/restore mp state

[Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>]

On 3 March 2015 at 20:06, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 03/03/2015 11:56, Alex Bennée wrote:
>> > > This adds the saving and restore of the current Multi-Processing state
>> > > of the machine. While the KVM_GET/SET_MP_STATE API exposes a number of
>> > > potential states for x86 we only use two for ARM. Either the process is
>> > > running or not.
>> >
>> > By this you mean "is the CPU in the PSCI powered down state or not",
>> > right?
>>
>> From the vcpu's perspective it is either running or not. However it is
>> the same mechanism that is used when PSCI_0_2_FN_CPU_OFF is passed the
>> VM, internally setting vcpu->arch.paused.

Well, it has to be (ABI defined to be) identical with being PSCI
powered down/up, because that's how userspace is going to be
treating it. If we might tell userspace we're in the "not running"
state for other cases than PSCI-powered-down then we probably need
to consider separating those out into separate states.

> I suggest that you define a new MP_STATE constant for this.  HALTED in
> x86 and s390 is the state an ARM processor enters when you execute wfi.

Architecturally the CPU doesn't have to enter any state at all
if you execute a WFI -- it might be implemented as "go to low
power state and wait for an interrupt" or "go low power but
maybe be unnecessarily woken up" or "nop, do nothing"...

>  Right now this is not migrated on ARM if I remember correctly, but
> perhaps you'll want to add it in the future.

...which is why we don't need to migrate this: it just means
that migration during WFI causes an unnecessary-wakeup, which
is architecturally fine.

-- PMM