Re: [PATCH 6/9] KVM: x86: Provide paravirtualized flush_tlb_multi()

From: Nadav Amit
Date: Tue Jun 25 2019 - 23:41:46 EST


> On Jun 25, 2019, at 8:35 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 7:39 PM Nadav Amit <namit@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On Jun 25, 2019, at 2:40 PM, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 6/12/19 11:48 PM, Nadav Amit wrote:
>>>> Support the new interface of flush_tlb_multi, which also flushes the
>>>> local CPU's TLB, instead of flush_tlb_others that does not. This
>>>> interface is more performant since it parallelize remote and local TLB
>>>> flushes.
>>>>
>>>> The actual implementation of flush_tlb_multi() is almost identical to
>>>> that of flush_tlb_others().
>>>
>>> This confused me a bit. I thought we didn't support paravirtualized
>>> flush_tlb_multi() from reading earlier in the series.
>>>
>>> But, it seems like that might be Xen-only and doesn't apply to KVM and
>>> paravirtualized KVM has no problem supporting flush_tlb_multi(). Is
>>> that right? It might be good to include some of that background in the
>>> changelog to set the context.
>>
>> Iâll try to improve the change-logs a bit. There is no inherent reason for
>> PV TLB-flushers not to implement their own flush_tlb_multi(). It is left
>> for future work, and here are some reasons:
>>
>> 1. Hyper-V/Xen TLB-flushing code is not very simple
>> 2. I donât have a proper setup
>> 3. I am lazy
>
> In the long run, I think that we're going to want a way for one CPU to
> do a remote flush and then, with appropriate locking, update the
> tlb_gen fields for the remote CPU. Getting this right may be a bit
> nontrivial.

What do you mean by âdo a remote flushâ?