Re: [Xen-devel] RE: Saving/Restoring IA32_TSC_AUX MSR

[Keir Fraser <keir.fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/12/2009 08:43, "Zhang, Xiantao" <xiantao.zhang@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>> The question has to be: what win do we get for faithful
>> virtualisation of RDTSCP in a virtualised environment? Supporting CPU
>> instructions just because they're there is not a useful effort.
> 
> As I know, RDTSCP can used to implment fast vgetcpu in newer Linux kernel.
> Current node and cpu info is saved in the MSR, and applications or libraries
> can get this info at ring3 through this instruction. If enable this
> instruction for vmx non-root mode,  it should benefit these kernels I think.

Sounds reasonable. Obviously this will be incompatible with pvrdtscp, but
the latter is off by default so this isn't a too serious problem I think.
Pvrdtscp will simply trump ordinary RDTSCP emulation when it is enabled.

You can put your meddling with TSC_AUX MSR in the context-switch path,
regradless of whether pvrdtscp's stays in __update_vcpu_system_time().

In short: have at it.

 -- Keir



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