linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] kvm: VMX: do not use vm-exit instruction length for fast MMIO

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Date:   Fri, 18 Aug 2017 16:46:38 +0800
From:   Jason Wang <jasowang@...hat.com>
To:     "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>
Cc:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, kvm@...r.kernel.org,
        rkrcmar@...hat.com, stable@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] kvm: VMX: do not use vm-exit instruction length for fast
 MMIO



On 2017年08月16日 22:10, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 03:34:54PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>> Microsoft pointed out privately to me that KVM's handling of
>> KVM_FAST_MMIO_BUS is invalid.  Using skip_emulation_instruction is invalid
>> in EPT misconfiguration vmexit handlers, because neither EPT violations
>> nor misconfigurations are listed in the manual among the VM exits that
>> set the VM-exit instruction length field.
>>
>> While physical processors seem to set the field, this is not architectural
>> and is just a side effect of the implementation.  I couldn't convince
>> myself of any condition on the exit qualification where VM-exit
>> instruction length "has" to be defined; there are no trap-like VM-exits
>> that can be repurposed; and fault-like VM-exits such as descriptor-table
>> exits provide no decoding information.  So I don't really see any way
>> to keep the full speedup.
>>
>> What we can do is use EMULTYPE_SKIP; it only saves 200 clock cycles
>> because computing the physical RIP and reading the instruction is
>> expensive, but at least the eventfd is signaled before entering the
>> emulator.  This saves on latency.  While at it, don't check breakpoints
>> when skipping the instruction, as presumably any side effect has been
>> exposed already.
>>
>> Adding a hypercall or MSR write that does a fast MMIO write to a physical
>> address would do it, but it adds hypervisor knowledge in virtio, including
>> CPUID handling.  So it would be pretty ugly in the guest-side implementation,
>> but if somebody wants to do it and the virtio side is acceptable to the
>> virtio maintainers, I am okay with it.
>>
>> Cc: Michael S. Tsirkin<mst@...hat.com>
>> Cc:stable@...r.kernel.org
>> Fixes: 68c3b4d1676d870f0453c31d5a52e7e65c7448ae
>> Suggested-by: Radim Krčmář<rkrcmar@...hat.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini<pbonzini@...hat.com>
> Jason (cc) who worked on the original optimization said he can
> work to test the performance impact.

I see regressions on both latency and cpu utilization through netperf 
TCP_RR test:

pkt_size/sessions/+transaction_rate%/+per_cpu_transaction_rate%
     1/     1/   +0%/   -5%
     1/    25/   -1%/   -2%
     1/    50/   -9%/  -10%
    64/     1/   -3%/   -9%
    64/    25/    0%/   -2%
    64/    50/  -10%/  -11%
   256/     1/  -10%/  -17%
   256/    25/  -11%/  -12%
   256/    50/   -9%/  -11%

Thanks