Re: [PATCH 0/7] KVM: x86: APX reg prep work

[Sean Christopherson]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2026, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 3/11/26 01:33, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > Clean up KVM's register tracking and storage in preparation for landing APX,
> > which expands the maximum number of GPRs from 16 to 32.
> > 
> > This is kinda sorta an RFC, as there are some very opinionated changes.  I.e.
> > if you dislike something, please speak up.
> > 
> > My thought is to treat R16-R31 as much like other GPRs as possible (though
> > maybe we don't need to expand regs[] as sketched out in the last patch?).
> 
> The cleanups in patches 1-4 are nice.
> 
> For APX specifically, in abstract it's nice to treat R16-R31 as much as
> possible as regular GPRs.  On the other hand, the extra 16 regs[] entries
> would be more or less unused, the ugly switch statements wouldn't go away.

Hmm, yeah, but only if XSAVE is the source of truth for guest R16-R31.

Do we know what the compiler and/or kernel rules for using R16-R31 will be?
E.g. if C code is allowed to use R16-R31 at will, then KVM will either need to
swap R16-R31 in assembly, or annotate a pile of functions as "no_egpr" or
whatever.
 
At that point, my vote would be to use regs[] to track R16-R31 for KVM's purposes.
IIUC, we could largely ignore XSAVE state at runtime and just ensure R16-R31 are
copied to/from userspace as needed, same as we do for PKRU.

If R16-R31 aren't generally available for C code, then how exactly is APX going
to be used?

Understanding the usage rules for R16-R31 seems fundamental to figuring what to
do in KVM...