Re: [PATCH 2/3] KVM: x86: introduce KVM_MEM_PCI_HOLE memory

[Jim Mattson]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2020 at 7:38 AM Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> PCIe config space can (depending on the configuration) be quite big but
> usually is sparsely populated. Guest may scan it by accessing individual
> device's page which, when device is missing, is supposed to have 'pci
> hole' semantics: reads return '0xff' and writes get discarded. Compared
> to the already existing KVM_MEM_READONLY, VMM doesn't need to allocate
> real memory and stuff it with '0xff'.

Note that the bus error semantics described should apply to *any*
unbacked guest physical addresses, not just addresses in the PCI hole.
(Typically, this also applies to the standard local APIC page
(0xfee00xxx) when the local APIC is either disabled or in x2APIC mode,
which is an area that kvm has had trouble with in the past.)