Re: [PATCH RFC v3 1/6] x86/paravirt: Add pv_idle_ops to paravirt ops

[Juergen Gross]

On 13/11/17 11:06, Quan Xu wrote:
> From: Quan Xu <quan.xu0@xxxxxxxxx>
> 
> So far, pv_idle_ops.poll is the only ops for pv_idle. .poll is called
> in idle path which will poll for a while before we enter the real idle
> state.
> 
> In virtualization, idle path includes several heavy operations
> includes timer access(LAPIC timer or TSC deadline timer) which will
> hurt performance especially for latency intensive workload like message
> passing task. The cost is mainly from the vmexit which is a hardware
> context switch between virtual machine and hypervisor. Our solution is
> to poll for a while and do not enter real idle path if we can get the
> schedule event during polling.
> 
> Poll may cause the CPU waste so we adopt a smart polling mechanism to
> reduce the useless poll.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Yang Zhang <yang.zhang.wz@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Quan Xu <quan.xu0@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Juergen Gross <jgross@xxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Alok Kataria <akataria@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: x86@xxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: virtualization@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hmm, is the idle entry path really so critical to performance that a new
pvops function is necessary? Wouldn't a function pointer, maybe guarded
by a static key, be enough? A further advantage would be that this would
work on other architectures, too.


Juergen