[PATCH 01/11] KVM: SVM: Preserve TLB control (i.e. pending TLB flush) on failed VMRUN

From: Paolo Bonzini

Date: Sat Sep 26 2026 - 01:33:16 EST


From: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx>

Don't reset the VMCB's TLB control back to "do nothing" on a failed VMRUN,
as empirical testing shows that the CPU performs the requested TLB flush if
and only if VMRUN is successful, i.e. clearing TLB control on a failed
VMRUN effectively drops a TLB flush.

Explicitly track the need to flush all ASIDs on a per-CPU basis, as the
ASID reuse condition is tied to the pCPU, not to the vCPU. As a bonus,
this also obviates the need to avoid clobbering FLUSH_ALL_ASID with
TLB_CONTROL_FLUSH_ASID, e.g. in svm_flush_tlb_asid().

Deliberately don't bother saving/restoring the "old" tlb_ctl on failure,
in quotes because it's not exactly the old tlb_ctl, it's the tlb_ctl from
after pre_svm_run(), but before updating tlb_ctl for flush_all_asids. If
VMRUN fails and TLB_CONTROL_FLUSH_ALL_ASID is forced, then the next
successful run of the VMCB *may* unnecessarily flush all ASIDs, which
strictly speaking could result in noisy neighbor issues. However, the
fact that new_asid() is already guest-triggerable, because of KVM's flawed
behavior of clearing the ASID on emulated INIT, means that a guest can
already trigger a flush of all ASIDs at roughly the same rate. And once
KVM stops clobbering the ASID on emulated INIT, *or* assigns a static ASID
to each vCPU, this flaw goes away.

Fixes: 38e5e92fe8c0 ("KVM: SVM: Implement Flush-By-Asid feature")
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reported-by: Stefan Teodorescu <fane@xxxxxxxxxx>
Suggested-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Jim Mattson <jmattson@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx>
Message-ID: <20260904170642.3291466-2-seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c | 13 ++++++++++---
arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.h | 1 +
2 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
index 7d59d301e1e5..afbaaaab84ed 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
@@ -1902,8 +1902,7 @@ static void new_asid(struct vcpu_svm *svm, struct svm_cpu_data *sd)
if (sd->next_asid > sd->max_asid) {
++sd->asid_generation;
sd->next_asid = sd->min_asid;
- svm->vmcb->control.tlb_ctl = TLB_CONTROL_FLUSH_ALL_ASID;
- vmcb_mark_dirty(svm->vmcb, VMCB_ASID);
+ sd->flush_all_asids = true;
}

svm->current_vmcb->asid_generation = sd->asid_generation;
@@ -4528,6 +4527,11 @@ static __no_kcsan fastpath_t svm_vcpu_run(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, u64 run_flags)
svm->vmcb->control.asid = svm->asid;
vmcb_mark_dirty(svm->vmcb, VMCB_ASID);
}
+ if (this_cpu_ptr(&svm_data)->flush_all_asids) {
+ svm->vmcb->control.tlb_ctl = TLB_CONTROL_FLUSH_ALL_ASID;
+ vmcb_mark_dirty(svm->vmcb, VMCB_ASID);
+ }
+
svm->vmcb->save.cr2 = vcpu->arch.cr2;

if (guest_cpu_cap_has(vcpu, X86_FEATURE_ERAPS) &&
@@ -4618,7 +4622,10 @@ static __no_kcsan fastpath_t svm_vcpu_run(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, u64 run_flags)
vcpu->arch.nested_run_pending = 0;
}

- svm->vmcb->control.tlb_ctl = TLB_CONTROL_DO_NOTHING;
+ if (!svm_is_vmrun_failure(svm->vmcb->control.exit_code)) {
+ this_cpu_ptr(&svm_data)->flush_all_asids = false;
+ svm->vmcb->control.tlb_ctl = TLB_CONTROL_DO_NOTHING;
+ }

/*
* Unconditionally mask off the CLEAR_RAP bit, the AND is just as cheap
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.h b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.h
index e958943b8162..84f19026d3e8 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.h
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.h
@@ -376,6 +376,7 @@ struct svm_cpu_data {
u32 next_asid;
u32 min_asid;

+ bool flush_all_asids;
bool bp_spec_reduce_set;

struct vmcb *save_area;
--
2.52.0