linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v1 0/5] KVM in-guest performance monitoring

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Message-ID: <4DCBE2C9.20709@redhat.com>
Date:	Thu, 12 May 2011 16:38:17 +0300
From:	Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>
To:	Joerg Roedel <joro@...tes.org>
CC:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, kvm@...r.kernel.org,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@...stprotocols.net>,
	Borislav Petkov <borislav.petkov@....com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v1 0/5] KVM in-guest performance monitoring

On 05/12/2011 04:06 PM, Joerg Roedel wrote:
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:51:11PM +0300, Avi Kivity wrote:
> >  On 05/12/2011 12:33 PM, Joerg Roedel wrote:
>
> >>  Gaah, I was just about to submit a talk about PMU virtualization for KVM
> >>  Forum :)
> >
> >  Speed matters.
>
> I'll take that as an argument for paravirt pmu, because that one is
> certainly faster than anything we can emulate on-top of perf_events ;-)

Correct, though some massaging of perf_events can make it faster.  Still 
we'll pay with more exits with the architectural PMU.

Note a v2 PMU can reduce the exit count since it has MSRs for 
programming many PMCs at once.

> >  Note, at this time the architectural PMU is only recognized on an Intel
> >  host.
> >
> >  Is the statement "if an AMD processor returns non-zero information in
> >  cpuid leaf 0xa, then that processor will be compatible with other
> >  vendors' processors reporting the same information" correct?
>
> AMD processors don't implement that cpuid leaf.

Right.  But if an AMD processor were to implement that leaf, it would be 
in a compatible manner, yes?

That allows us to


-    if (vendor == intel && leaf_0xa_indicates_arch_pmu)
+    if (leaf_0xa_indicates_arch_pmu)

> >  If so, we can move the detection of the architectural pmu outside the
> >  cpu vendor checks, and this code will work on both AMD and Intel
> >  processors (even if the host cpu doesn't have an architectural PMU).
>
> Thats already some kind of paravirtualization. Don't get me wrong, I see
> the point of emulating a real pmu in the guest. But on the other side I
> think a interface that works across cpu models fits better into the KVM
> design, because KVM (oposed to other hypervisors) trys to hide details
> of the host cpu as much as necessary to get migration working between
> different cpus.
> And since pmu are, as you said, very model-specific, some abstraction is
> needed.

The architectural PMU is not model specific.

> In the end probably both ways can be implemented in parallel:
>
> 	* re-implementing the host-pmu using perf_events for -cpu host
> 	  guests
> 	* a paravirt pmu for everybody that wants migration and more
> 	  accurate results


A paravirt PMU also has to be implemented on top of perf_events.  
Otherwise we can't share this resource.  So the only question is what 
the interface looks like.  The arch pmu is non-optimized, but well 
specified and somewhat supported in guests.  A paravirt pmu is not so 
well specified at this point but can be faster (less exits).

-- 
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function

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