Re: [PATCH v2 5/5] KVM: x86: hyper-v: Deactivate APICv only when AutoEOI feature is in use

[Vitaly Kuznetsov]

Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On 18/05/21 16:43, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
>> APICV_INHIBIT_REASON_HYPERV is currently unconditionally forced upon
>> SynIC activation as SynIC's AutoEOI is incompatible with APICv/AVIC. It is,
>> however, possible to track whether the feature was actually used by the
>> guest and only inhibit APICv/AVIC when needed.
>> 
>> TLFS suggests a dedicated 'HV_DEPRECATING_AEOI_RECOMMENDED' flag to let
>> Windows know that AutoEOI feature should be avoided. While it's up to
>> KVM userspace to set the flag, KVM can help a bit by exposing global
>> APICv/AVIC enablement: in case APICv/AVIC usage is impossible, AutoEOI
>> is still preferred.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Should it also disable APICv unconditionally if 
> HV_DEPRECATING_AEOI_RECOMMENDED is not in the guest CPUID?  That should 
> avoid ping-pong between enabled and disabled APICv even in pathological 
> cases that we cannot think about.

When you run Hyper-V on KVM it doesn't use SynIC (let alone AutoEOI) but
we still inhibit APICv unconditionally. The patch as-is improves this
without any userspace changes required and I see it as a benefit. Going
forward, we will definitely add something like 'hv-synic-noaeoi' to QEMU
to make non-nesting setups benefit too but it'll take a while for this
option to propagate to real world configurations (sigh).

-- 
Vitaly