linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3] enable x2APIC without interrupt remapping under KVM

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Message-ID: <m1eit1acxl.fsf@fess.ebiederm.org>
Date:	Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:44:54 -0700
From:	ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:	Gleb Natapov <gleb@...hat.com>
Cc:	"linux-kernel\@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@...el.com>,
	Sheng Yang <sheng@...ux.intel.com>,
	"kvm\@vger.kernel.org" <kvm@...r.kernel.org>,
	"avi\@redhat.com" <avi@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] enable x2APIC without interrupt remapping under KVM

Gleb Natapov <gleb@...hat.com> writes:

> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 02:24:05AM -0700, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>> Gleb Natapov <gleb@...hat.com> writes:
>> 
>> > KVM would like to provide x2APIC interface to a guest without emulating
>> > interrupt remapping device. The reason KVM prefers guest to use x2APIC
>> > is that x2APIC interface is better virtualizable and provides better
>> > performance than mmio xAPIC interface:
>> >
>> > - msr exits are faster than mmio (no page table walk, emulation)
>> > - no need to read back ICR to look at the busy bit
>> > - one 64 bit ICR write instead of two 32 bit writes
>> > - shared code with the Hyper-V paravirt interface
>> >     
>> > Included patch changes x2APIC enabling logic to enable it even if IR
>> > initialization failed, but kernel runs under KVM and no apic id is
>> > greater than 255 (if there is one spec requires BIOS to move to x2apic
>> > mode before starting an OS).
>> 
>> 
>> How common is hotplug hardware in kvm?  In particular hotplug cpus?
>> 
> It works for Linux guests.

>
>> To support that seriously you need interrupt remapping.
>> 
> Can you explain why?

Because ioapics don't fully function according to spec,
and the interrupt code on the hotplug path is a horrible
terrible broken hack for ioapics.

It is better than nothing but it certainly is not something
I would expect to work all of the time.

Interrupt remapping is the one case where we have hardware
that works according to spec and that works reasonably well.

Eric
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