Re: [PATCH 4/7] x86,tlb: make lazy TLB mode lazier

From: Vitaly Kuznetsov
Date: Fri Jul 20 2018 - 06:18:36 EST


Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:02:10AM +0200, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
>> Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>>
>> > [I added PeterZ and Vitaly -- can you see any way in which this would
>> > break something obscure? I don't.]
>>
>> Thanks for CCing me,
>>
>> I don't see how this can break things either. At first glance, however,
>> I'm afraid we can add performance penalty to virtualized guests which
>> don't use native_flush_tlb_others() (Hyper-V, KVM): we will be reloading
>> CR3 without a need as we don't look at lazy mode in PV tlb flush
>> functions.
>>
>> We can either check to switch_mm_irqs_off() that
>> native_flush_tlb_others() is in use or teach PV tlb flush functions to
>> look at lazy mode too.
>
> As Rik noted elsewhere in the thread, kvm_flush_tlb_others() ends up
> calling native_tlb_flush_others() for all running vcpu threads.

Ah, right!

>
> The Hyper-V thing is magical, we can't really do anything about it
> there. Let them worry about it.

Well, we kinda know how this magic works: we just ask the hypervisor to
flush TLB for us (if the particular vCPU is running) :-) Anyway, nothing
stops us from duplicating the logic regarding lazy mode from
native_flush_tlb_others() to hyperv_flush_tlb_others(): if TLB state is
lazy omit TLB flush.

--
Vitaly