This feature creates a new field in the VMCB called Pause
Filter Count. If Pause Filter Count is greater than 0 and
intercepting PAUSEs is enabled, the processor will increment
an internal counter when a PAUSE instruction occurs instead
of intercepting. When the internal counter reaches the
Pause Filter Count value, a PAUSE intercept will occur.
This feature can be used to detect contended spinlocks,
especially when the lock holding VCPU is not scheduled.
Rescheduling another VCPU prevents the VCPU seeking the
lock from wasting its quantum by spinning idly. Perform
the reschedule by increasing the the credited time on
the VCPU.
Experimental results show that most spinlocks are held
for less than 1000 PAUSE cycles or more than a few
thousand. Default the Pause Filter Counter to 3000 to
detect the contended spinlocks.
Processor support for this feature is indicated by a CPUID
bit.
On a 24 core system running 4 guests each with 16 VCPUs,
this patch improved overall performance of each guest's
32 job kernbench by approximately 1%. Further performance
improvement may be possible with a more sophisticated
yield algorithm.