The KVM_HINTS_PHYS_ADDRESS_SIZE_DATA_VALID bit hints to the guest that the size of the physical address space as advertised by CPUID leaf 0x80000008 is actually valid and can be used. Unfortunately this is not the case today with qemu. Default behavior is to advertise 40 address bits (which I think comes from the very first x64 opteron processors). There are lots of intel desktop processors around which support less than that (36 or 39 depending on age), and when trying to use the full 40 bit address space on those things go south quickly. This renders the physical address size information effectively useless for guests. This patch paves the way to fix that by adding a hint for the guest so it knows whenever the physical address size is usable or not. The plan for qemu is to set the bit when the physical address size is valid. That is the case when qemu is started with the host-phys-bits=on option set for the cpu. Eventually qemu can also flip the default for that option from off to on, unfortunately that isn't easy for backward compatibility reasons. The plan for the firmware is to check that bit and when it is set just query and use the available physical address space. When the bit is not set be conservative and try not exceed 36 bits (aka 64G) address space. The latter is what the firmware does today unconditionally. [ Temporary qemu patch for RfC patch and testing. This change must actually be done in the linux kernel, then picked up by qemu via header file sync ]. Signed-off-by: Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@xxxxxxxxxx> --- include/standard-headers/asm-x86/kvm_para.h | 3 ++- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/include/standard-headers/asm-x86/kvm_para.h b/include/standard-headers/asm-x86/kvm_para.h index f0235e58a1d3..962dabcfdb68 100644 --- a/include/standard-headers/asm-x86/kvm_para.h +++ b/include/standard-headers/asm-x86/kvm_para.h @@ -37,7 +37,8 @@ #define KVM_FEATURE_HC_MAP_GPA_RANGE 16 #define KVM_FEATURE_MIGRATION_CONTROL 17 -#define KVM_HINTS_REALTIME 0 +#define KVM_HINTS_REALTIME 0 +#define KVM_HINTS_PHYS_ADDRESS_SIZE_DATA_VALID 1 /* The last 8 bits are used to indicate how to interpret the flags field * in pvclock structure. If no bits are set, all flags are ignored. -- 2.37.3
