[Xen-devel] qemu-dm performance

[Tommie McAfee <tommie.mcafee@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been investigating why qemu-dm is causing %CPU to be high when
viewing fully vitalized guests with vncviewer( about 20% usage ).  

I've looked at the code, and one area that I'm curious about is the
vram_dirty() function in tools/ioemu/hw/vga.c.  Please correct me if I'm
wrong, but vram_dirty() seems to be using SSE inline functions to
optimize it's bit-shifting/masking/loading/storing/comparison operations
to see if dirty bits need to be set for a page within the shadow table.
Also, I used gdb to make sure that I'm really executing the SSE
optimized version of vram_dirty() that utilizes xmm0 registers.

So out of curiosity, I decided to comment out calls to vram_dirty() from
vga_draw_graphic() and the guests still behave normally, but CPU% now
drops to 8%.  I know this is silly, and that I should expect a CPU drop
for commenting out code, but why is vram_dirty() adding 12% CPU
utilization when it can be commented out without crashing my viewer, and
without me even noticing a difference in the guests behavior?  Can
someone help me to understand the purpose vram_dirty serves and perhaps
why it seems 2 be so CPU intensive without really changing the way my
virtual guest behaves?

Also, where else should I look in the code for possible explanations to
why qemu-dm uses 20% CPU simply to view a guest.  All comments and
suggestions regarding this matter are appreciated,

thx,

T. McAfee
Xen Testing

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