Re: [PATCH v3] KVM: PPC: Book3S HV: Avoid spurious interrupts caused by LPCR_MER bit

[Mukesh Kumar Chaurasiya]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 04:40:42PM +0530, Gautam Menghani wrote:
> A huge number of spurious interrupts can be seen immediately after a KVM
> on PowerNV guest boots up in XIVE mode.
> 
> $ cat /proc/interrupts  | grep SPU
> SPU:     223705     192439     273526     147623   Spurious interrupts
> 
> This bug was introduced by commit ecd10702baae5 ("KVM: PPC: Book3S HV:
> Handle pending exceptions on guest entry with MSR_EE"). The root cause
> is that once LPCR_MER bit is set, it is supposed to be reset by
> software. But when a vCPU starts running with LPCR_MER set, the vCPU does
> not exit back to the host until the decrementer expires or there is an
> hcall, etc. This is because KVM on PowerNV guests have support for
> native XIVE, so they are not dependent on host for interrupt emulation.
> Due to this behaviour, a huge number of spurious interrupts are seen
> since LPCR_MER continues to be set and LPCR_MER cannot be reset until the
> vCPU exits to the host.
> 
> Fix this behaviour by not using the LPCR_MER bit whenever native XIVE is
> available (currently in case of KVM on PowerNV only), as the XIVE hardware
> can present interrupts to the KVM guest vCPU directly. So the LPCR_MER
> functionality is not required. This reduces the number of spurious
> interrupts drastically.
Hey Gautam,

Thanks for this. Can you also share the numbers after the change.

Regards,
Mukesh
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