On Thu, Apr 04, 2013 at 02:09:53PM +0200, Alexander Graf wrote: > > On 04.04.2013, at 13:04, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote: > > > On Thu, Apr 04, 2013 at 01:57:34PM +0200, Alexander Graf wrote: > >> > >> On 04.04.2013, at 12:50, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote: > >> > >>> With KVM, MMIO is much slower than PIO, due to the need to > >>> do page walk and emulation. But with EPT, it does not have to be: we > >>> know the address from the VMCS so if the address is unique, we can look > >>> up the eventfd directly, bypassing emulation. > >>> > >>> Add an interface for userspace to specify this per-address, we can > >>> use this e.g. for virtio. > >>> > >>> The implementation adds a separate bus internally. This serves two > >>> purposes: > >>> - minimize overhead for old userspace that does not use PV MMIO > >>> - minimize disruption in other code (since we don't know the length, > >>> devices on the MMIO bus only get a valid address in write, this > >>> way we don't need to touch all devices to teach them handle > >>> an dinvalid length) > >>> > >>> At the moment, this optimization is only supported for EPT on x86 and > >>> silently ignored for NPT and MMU, so everything works correctly but > >>> slowly. > >>> > >>> TODO: NPT, MMU and non x86 architectures. > >>> > >>> The idea was suggested by Peter Anvin. Lots of thanks to Gleb for > >>> pre-review and suggestions. > >>> > >>> Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@xxxxxxxxxx> > >> > >> This still uses page fault intercepts which are orders of magnitudes > >> slower than hypercalls. > > > > Not really. Here's a test: > > compare vmcall to portio: > > > > vmcall 1519 > > ... > > outl_to_kernel 1745 > > > > compare portio to mmio: > > > > mmio-wildcard-eventfd:pci-mem 3529 > > mmio-pv-eventfd:pci-mem 1878 > > portio-wildcard-eventfd:pci-io 1846 > > > > So not orders of magnitude. > > https://dl.dropbox.com/u/8976842/KVM%20Forum%202012/MMIO%20Tuning.pdf > > Check out page 41. Higher is better (number is number of loop cycles in a second). My test system was an AMD Istanbul based box. Wow 2x difference. The difference seems to be much smaller now. Newer hardware? Newer software? > > > >> Why don't you just create a PV MMIO hypercall > >> that the guest can use to invoke MMIO accesses towards the host based > >> on physical addresses with explicit length encodings? > >> That way you simplify and speed up all code paths, exceeding the speed > >> of PIO exits even. It should also be quite easily portable, as all > >> other platforms have hypercalls available as well. > >> > >> > >> Alex > > > > I sent such a patch, but maintainers seem reluctant to add hypercalls. > > Gleb, could you comment please? > > > > A fast way to do MMIO is probably useful in any case ... > > Yes, but at least according to my numbers optimizing anything that is not hcalls is a waste of time. > > > Alex This was the implementation: 'kvm_para: add mmio word store hypercall'. Again, I don't mind. -- MST -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
