Re: [Xen-devel] Linux 3.11 and the future...

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 08:38:57AM +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >>> On 05.06.13 at 22:19, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx> 
> >>> wrote:
> >  b) microcode update. One needs to cherry-pick
> >     xen: add CPU microcode update driver
> >     x86/microcode: check proper return code.
> >     microcode_xen: Add support for AMD family >= 15h
> > 
> >    The one solution is to use the piggyback on early microcode loading
> >    that the Linux kernel is doing. Needs implementation in the hypervisor.
> 
> What hypervisor side solution apart from the existing ucode
> updating during early boot are you thinking of here?

Copy from the
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/GSoC_2013#Microcode_uploader_implementation_in_Xen_hypervisor

"
Intel is working on early implementation where the microcode binary
would be appended to the initrd image. The kernel would scan for the
appropriate magic constant
(http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1413384; looks for
"kernel/x86/microcode/GenuineIntel.bin") and load the microcode very
early. This is all done for the Linux kernel code, but we currently do
not that in the Xen hypervisor.
The scope of the work can be split up in
a) just do the extraction of microcode from the initial ramdisk binary (aka
initrd) and apply it. This can be done during the parsing of the dom0
initial ramdisk. The hypervisor already has the functionality to apply a
microcode from the multiboot targets. This would add code to parse the
initrd image
b) do it during very early bootup - which is why the early microcode work
started - to deal with CPUs which don't expose certain CPUID flags
because they need a microcode update. This part of work is much more
difficult - as it would involve working only with early bootup
pagetables. This being done _before_ the Xen hypervisor sets its own
pagetables - as some of the fixes that the microcode has, can be for the
CPU to be able to do PSE properly.
"

The a) solution was what I had in mind.

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