[PATCH v3 2/3] KVM: SVM: Disable x2AVIC RDMSR interception for MSRs KVM actually supports

From: Sean Christopherson

Date: Thu May 14 2026 - 17:31:32 EST


When toggling x2AVIC on/off, use KVM's curated mask of x2APIC MSRs that
can/should be passed through to the guest (or not) when 2AVIC is enabled.
Using the effective list provided by the local APIC emulation fixes
multiple (classes of) bugs, as the existing hand-coded list of MSRs is
wrong on multiple fronts:

- ARBPRI isn't supported by x2APIC, but its unaccelerated AVIC intercept
is fault-like; disabling interception is nonsensical and suboptimal as
the access generates a #VMEXIT that requires decoding the instruction.

- DFR and ICR2 aren't supported by x2APIC and so don't need their
intercepts disabled for performance reasons. While the #GP due to
x2APIC being abled has higher priority than the trap-like #VMEXIT,
disabling interception of unsupported MSRs is confusing and unnecessary.

- RRR is completely unsupported.

- AVIC currently fails to pass through the "range of vectors" registers,
IRR, ISR, and TMR, as e.g. X2APIC_MSR(APIC_IRR) only affects IRR0, and
thus only disables intercept for vectors 31:0 (which are the *least*
interesting registers).

- TMCCT (the current APIC timer count) isn't accelerated by hardware, and
generates a fault-like AVIC_UNACCELERATED_ACCESS #VMEXIT, i.e. requires
KVM to decode the instruction to figure out what the guest was trying to
access. Note, the only reason this isn't a fatal bug is that the AVIC
architecture had the foresight to guard against buggy hypervisors. E.g.
if hardware simply read from the virtual APIC page, the guest would get
garbage (because the timer is emulated in software).

Fixes: 4d1d7942e36a ("KVM: SVM: Introduce logic to (de)activate x2AVIC mode")
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reviewed-by: Naveen N Rao (AMD) <naveen@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/x86/kvm/svm/avic.c | 13 +++++++++++--
1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/avic.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/avic.c
index adf211860949..8e4926c7b8dc 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/avic.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/avic.c
@@ -122,6 +122,9 @@ static u32 x2avic_max_physical_id;
static void avic_set_x2apic_msr_interception(struct vcpu_svm *svm,
bool intercept)
{
+ struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu = &svm->vcpu;
+ u64 rd_regs;
+
static const u32 x2avic_passthrough_msrs[] = {
X2APIC_MSR(APIC_ID),
X2APIC_MSR(APIC_LVR),
@@ -162,9 +165,15 @@ static void avic_set_x2apic_msr_interception(struct vcpu_svm *svm,
if (!x2avic_enabled)
return;

+ rd_regs = kvm_x2apic_disable_read_intercept_reg_mask(vcpu);
+
+ for_each_set_bit(i, (unsigned long *)&rd_regs, BITS_PER_TYPE(rd_regs))
+ svm_set_intercept_for_msr(vcpu, APIC_BASE_MSR + i,
+ MSR_TYPE_R, intercept);
+
for (i = 0; i < ARRAY_SIZE(x2avic_passthrough_msrs); i++)
- svm_set_intercept_for_msr(&svm->vcpu, x2avic_passthrough_msrs[i],
- MSR_TYPE_RW, intercept);
+ svm_set_intercept_for_msr(vcpu, x2avic_passthrough_msrs[i],
+ MSR_TYPE_W, intercept);

svm->x2avic_msrs_intercepted = intercept;
}
--
2.54.0.563.g4f69b47b94-goog