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Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 0/3 v2] XSAVE/XRSTOR fixes and enhancements

To: Keir Fraser <keir.fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 0/3 v2] XSAVE/XRSTOR fixes and enhancements
From: Weidong Han <weidong.han@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:53:44 +0800
Cc: Xen-devel <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Jan Beulich <JBeulich@xxxxxxxxxx>
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Keir Fraser wrote:
On 31/08/2010 15:52, "Han, Weidong" <weidong.han@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Change logs from v1 -> v2:
Due to not guarantee backward compatibility, drop the guest save/restore patch
here. Will re-implement it later. In addition, split the original fix frozen
states patch into XSAVE/XRSTOR cleanup patch and fix frozen state patch.

Patch 1/3: XSAVE/XRSTOR: some cleanups
Replace xfeature_low and xfeature_high with a u64 variable xfeature_mask.
In structure hvm_vcpu, rename xfeature_mask to xcr0
Provide EDX:EAX with all bits set to 1 for XSAVE and XRSTOR as spec
recommends.

Patch 2/3: Fix frozen states
If a guest sets a state and dirties the state, but later temporarily clears
the state, and at this time if this vcpu is scheduled out, then other vcpus
may corrupt the state before the vcpu is scheduled in again, thus the state
cannot be restored correctly. To solve this issue, this patch save/restore all
states unconditionally on vcpu context switch.

Performance overhead of this fix? Is there no other lazy save technique that
can work?
I think the cost of set_xcr0 which just changes some bits in XCR0 register should be little. I don't have any optimization for it now.
Patch 3/3. Enable guest AVX
This patch enables Intel(R) Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) for guest.

If we enable this but don't implement save/restore then don't guests lose
state across s/r with unpredictable results?
Yes. As I said in another email, actually it already breaks hvm guests save/restore on platforms which supports XSAVE/XRSTOR.

Regards,
Weidong





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