On 05/08/21 20:38, Sean Christopherson wrote:
Fast forward to today, and KVM has long since stopped running the guest with the host's EFER.NX. Not only does KVM context switch EFER if host.EFER.NX=1 && guest.EFER.NX=0, KVM also forces host.EFER.NX=0 && guest.EFER.NX=1 when using shadow paging (to emulate SMEP). Furthermore, the entire motivation for the restriction was made obsolete over a decade ago when Intel added dedicated host and guest EFER fields in the VMCS (Nehalem timeframe), which reduced the overhead of context switching EFER from 400+ cycles (2 * WRMSR + 1 * RDMSR) to a mere ~2 cycles.
Both pretty good points. :) Queued, thanks. Paolo
