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This adds a register identifier for use with the one_reg interface to allow the decrementer expiry time to be read and written by userspace. The decrementer expiry time is in guest timebase units and is equal to the sum of the decrementer and the guest timebase. (The expiry time is used rather than the decrementer value itself because the expiry time is not constantly changing, though the decrementer value is, while the guest vcpu is not running.) Without this, a guest vcpu migrated to a new host will see its decrementer set to some random value. On POWER8 and earlier, the decrementer is 32 bits wide and counts down at 512MHz, so the guest vcpu will potentially see no decrementer interrupts for up to about 4 seconds, which will lead to a stall. With POWER9, the decrementer is now 56 bits side, so the stall can be much longer (up to 2.23 years) and more noticeable. To help work around the problem in cases where userspace has not been updated to migrate the decrementer expiry time, we now set the default decrementer expiry at vcpu creation time to the current time rather than the maximum possible value. This should mean an immediate decrementer interrupt when a migrated vcpu starts running. In cases where the decrementer is 32 bits wide and more than 4 seconds elapse between the creation of the vcpu and when it first runs, the decrementer would have wrapped around to positive values and there may still be a stall - but this is no worse than the current situation. In the large-decrementer case, we are sure to get an immediate decrementer interrupt (assuming the time from vcpu creation to first run is less than 2.23 years) and we thus avoid a very long stall. Signed-off-by: Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>
Linux kernel ============ This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or ``make pdfdocs``. There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory, several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file. 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.