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

[Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> > If this is true the only safe use of TSC_AUX is for
> > its originally designed intent: To determine if two
> > successive rdtscp instructions were or were not
> > executed on the same processor.  Since this cannot
> > be guaranteed in a VM, that's a reasonable argument
> > that TSC_AUX shouldn't be exposed at all (meaning the
> > rdtscp bit in cpuid should be turned off by Xen).
> 
> This should work if you bind (i.e. pin) each vcpu to each 
> CPU, as I suggested.

Yes, it does.  If there were a reasonable way for an
application to check "am I running on a VM for which
each vcpu has been pinned?" this might be a reasonable
constraint as, if the app isn't, it could fail or at least
log a message.  But if the app will randomly fail
(or perform horribly) depending on whether the
underlying VM is pinned or not (which might even
change across a migration or if a sysadmin is
"tuning" his data center), I don't think
enterprise customers would appreciate that.


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