Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] nestedhvm: ASID emulation

[Keir Fraser <keir.xen@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 13/04/2011 16:19, "Christoph Egger" <Christoph.Egger@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 04/13/11 17:05, Keir Fraser wrote:
>> On 13/04/2011 15:26, "Christoph Egger"<Christoph.Egger@xxxxxxx>  wrote:
>> 
>> Is this measurable on a macro benchmark?
> 
> I measured this with xentrace while l2 guest is booting.
> 
> The speedup is noticable on the end-user side just by the feeling on how
> fast the l2 guest reacts on user input.

Yikes. Does nestedhvm suck really badly then? I can't believe this patch
alone gets you from sucky to good performance. Is it an improvement from
sucky to not-quite-as-sucky?

>> I mean this looks like a micro-optimisation on a feature that noone is going
>> to use for serious performance work anyway.
>> 
>>> 4. nestedhvm is enabled and we are going to run l2 guest
>>> 
>>> We run the l1 guest in the last call. The asid generation may have
>>> changed by then. In this case the current nv_n2asid number is stale
>>> and the value of data->next_asid is<= of nv->nv_n2asid.
>> 
>> How do you know for sure that next_asid will be<= nv_n2asid in this case?
>> What if other VCPUs have run meanwhile, and next_asid has been incremented
>> multiple times until it is greather than nv_n2asid?
> 
> In that case  curr->arch.hvm_vcpu.asid_generation is not equal to
> data->core_asid_generation  and a new hw ASID number is assigned
> regardless of the values of data->next_asid and nv_n2asid.

What if nv_n2asid wast last assigned on a previous generation, but nv_n1asid
was assigned from the current generation? Then you'd have next_asid >
nv_n2asid, but nv_n2asid is stale.

 -- Keir

> Christoph
> 
>> 
>>   -- Keir
>> 
>>> The the value of nv->nv_n2asid is valid if l1 guest doesn't change
>>> the virtual asid (= asid number in the virtual vmcb) and
>>> data->next_asid is larger than nv->nv_n2asid. In this case
>>> just reuse the same hw ASID that has been used from the last
>>> VMRUN emulation.
>>> 
>>> 5. nestedhvm is enabled and we are going to run l2 guest again
>>> 
>>> The same hw ASID should be reused unless the generation changed because
>>> the nestedp2m got flushed or the vcpu moved to a different physical cpu,
>>> for example.
>>> But the hw ASID number may never match the hw ASID used to run the l1 guest.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> In all cases we have to verify that the
>>> 
>>>> I wouldn't bother fixing #2 unless there's a convincing answer for #1.
>>>> 
>>>>    -- Keir
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 



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