From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>
To: virtio-comment@lists.linux.dev
Subject: [PATCH v3 0/2] balloon: DEVICE_INIT_REPORTED and DEVICE_INIT_ON_INFLATE
Date: Tue, 5 May 2026 12:08:01 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <cover.1777995753.git.mst@redhat.com> (raw)
Once a page gets out of balloon (on deflate, or on access for
reporting) the Linux guest inits it before giving it to app.
It's a waste - the page is already inited by the host.
Add balloon support for skipping that, that provides significant
performance gains.
This adds two new feature bits for the balloon device that allow the
device to signal that it has initialized (zeroed or poison-filled) pages
on behalf of the driver.
The variant with poison does not really seem useful, so I am still
trying to figure out whether we should simply outlaw it.
Old implementations (new ones will be posted ASAP):
QEMU: https://lore.kernel.org/all/cover.1777824548.git.mst@redhat.com
Linux: https://lore.kernel.org/all/cover.1777803445.git.mst@redhat.com
Tested with QEMU + Linux guest: 232ms -> 51ms (-78%) for 256MB
page allocation in a 2GB VM.
Changes since v2:
- I realized we can't really avoid a new feature bit:
poison is a promise from driver to initialize pages.
- lots of other changes
Changes v1->v2:
- reporting can actually just utilize used length to see what
was initialized! so we do not need a bitmap for that.
- qemu really needs a way to skip init for some pages.
Add that to inflate path.
Add security considerations (for coco).
Michael S. Tsirkin (2):
balloon: add VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_DEVICE_INIT_REPORTED
balloon: add VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_DEVICE_INIT_ON_INFLATE
device-types/balloon/description.tex | 147 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 145 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
--
MST
next reply other threads:[~2026-05-05 16:08 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-05-05 16:08 Michael S. Tsirkin [this message]
2026-05-05 16:08 ` [PATCH v3 1/2] balloon: add VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_DEVICE_INIT_REPORTED Michael S. Tsirkin
2026-05-05 16:08 ` [PATCH v3 2/2] balloon: add VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_DEVICE_INIT_ON_INFLATE Michael S. Tsirkin
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=cover.1777995753.git.mst@redhat.com \
--to=mst@redhat.com \
--cc=virtio-comment@lists.linux.dev \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox