1e9e2622a1
ICR and TSCDEADLINE MSRs write cause the main MSRs write vmexits in our product observation, multicast IPIs are not as common as unicast IPI like RESCHEDULE_VECTOR and CALL_FUNCTION_SINGLE_VECTOR etc. This patch introduce a mechanism to handle certain performance-critical WRMSRs in a very early stage of KVM VMExit handler. This mechanism is specifically used for accelerating writes to x2APIC ICR that attempt to send a virtual IPI with physical destination-mode, fixed delivery-mode and single target. Which was found as one of the main causes of VMExits for Linux workloads. The reason this mechanism significantly reduce the latency of such virtual IPIs is by sending the physical IPI to the target vCPU in a very early stage of KVM VMExit handler, before host interrupts are enabled and before expensive operations such as reacquiring KVM’s SRCU lock. Latency is reduced even more when KVM is able to use APICv posted-interrupt mechanism (which allows to deliver the virtual IPI directly to target vCPU without the need to kick it to host). Testing on Xeon Skylake server: The virtual IPI latency from sender send to receiver receive reduces more than 200+ cpu cycles. Reviewed-by: Liran Alon <liran.alon@oracle.com> Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> Cc: Radim Krčmář <rkrcmar@redhat.com> Cc: Sean Christopherson <sean.j.christopherson@intel.com> Cc: Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@redhat.com> Cc: Liran Alon <liran.alon@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Wanpeng Li <wanpengli@tencent.com> Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.