Re: [RFC PATCH v3 09/21] KVM: x86: Fix KVM clock precision in __get_kvmclock()

[Paul Durrant]

On 22/05/2024 01:17, David Woodhouse wrote:
> From: David Woodhouse <dwmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> When in 'master clock mode' (i.e. when host and guest TSCs are behaving
> sanely and in sync), the KVM clock is defined in terms of the guest TSC.
>
> When TSC scaling is used, calculating the KVM clock directly from *host*
> TSC cycles leads to a systemic drift from the values calculated by the
> guest from its TSC.
>
> Commit 451a707813ae ("KVM: x86/xen: improve accuracy of Xen timers")
> had a simple workaround for the specific case of Xen timers, as it had an
> actual vCPU to hand and could use its scaling information. That commit
> noted that it was broken for the general case of get_kvmclock_ns(), and
> said "I'll come back to that".
>
> Since __get_kvmclock() is invoked without a specific CPU, it needs to
> be able to find or generate the scaling values required to perform the
> correct calculation.
>
> Thankfully, TSC scaling can only happen with X86_FEATURE_CONSTANT_TSC,
> so it isn't as complex as it might have been.
>
> In __kvm_synchronize_tsc(), note the current vCPU's scaling ratio in
> kvm->arch.last_tsc_scaling_ratio. That is only protected by the
> tsc_write_lock, so in pvclock_update_vm_gtod_copy(), copy it into a
> separate kvm->arch.master_tsc_scaling_ratio so that it can be accessed
> using the kvm->arch.pvclock_sc seqcount lock. Also generate the mul and
> shift factors to convert to nanoseconds for the corresponding KVM clock,
> just as kvm_guest_time_update() would.
>
> In __get_kvmclock(), which runs within a seqcount retry loop, use those
> values to convert host to guest TSC and then to nanoseconds. Only fall
> back to using get_kvmclock_base_ns() when not in master clock mode.
>
> There was previously a code path in __get_kvmclock() which looked like
> it could set KVM_CLOCK_TSC_STABLE without KVM_CLOCK_REALTIME, perhaps
> even on 32-bit hosts. In practice that could never happen as the
> ka->use_master_clock flag couldn't be set on 32-bit, and even on 64-bit
> hosts it would never be set when the system clock isn't TSC-based. So
> that code path is now removed.
>
> The kvm_get_wall_clock_epoch() function had the same problem; make it
> just call get_kvmclock() and subtract kvmclock from wallclock, with
> the same fallback as before.
>
> Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>   arch/x86/include/asm/kvm_host.h |   4 +
>   arch/x86/kvm/x86.c              | 151 ++++++++++++++++----------------
>   2 files changed, 79 insertions(+), 76 deletions(-)

Reviewed-by: Paul Durrant <paul@xxxxxxx>