Re: [PATCH] KVM: x86: Convert tsc_write_lock to raw_spinlock

From: Avi Kivity
Date: Tue Feb 08 2011 - 04:16:16 EST


On 02/07/2011 07:23 PM, Jan Kiszka wrote:
On 2011-02-07 18:10, Avi Kivity wrote:
> On 02/07/2011 06:59 PM, Jan Kiszka wrote:
>>>
>>> (well, actually, cpufreq_notifier and kvm_arch_hardware_enable are
>>> already non preemptible, and the stats code should just go away?)
>>
>> The stats code is trivial to convert, so it doesn't matter.
>
> Removal is easier.

Is that stat interface no longer used?

It's there for compatibility. I'm itching to remove it. See qemu-kvm.git/kvm/kvm_stat for the only known user, and for the replacement via tracepoints.

Tracepoints have marginally lower overhead when disabled, and somewhat higher overhead when enabled. A disadvantage of tracepoints is that it is harder to associate an event with a vm when that event is triggered by a workqueue, but I don't think it matters in practice (kvm_stat doesn't even provide a per-vm breakdown).

>
>> But what about mmu_shrink and its list_move_tail? How is this
>> synchronized against kvm_destroy_vm - already today?
>
> kvm_destroy_vm() takes kvm_lock. If a vm is destroyed before
> mmu_shrink(), mmu_shrink() will never see it. If we reach mmu_shrink()
> before kvm_destroy_vm(), the latter will wait until mmu_shrink() is done.
>

Ah, I was confused. Would require some more logic if we wanted to make
the loop lock-less, though.

Yes, the usual rcu_read_lock() / grab reference / rcu_read_unlock().

--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function

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