Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH RFC V10 15/18] kvm : Paravirtual ticketlocks support for linux guests running on KVM hypervisor

[Raghavendra K T <raghavendra.kt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 07/17/2013 03:04 PM, Gleb Natapov wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 12:12:35AM +0530, Raghavendra K T wrote:
> > > I do not think it is very rare to get interrupt between
> > > local_irq_restore() and halt() under load since any interrupt that
> > > occurs between local_irq_save() and local_irq_restore() will be
> > > delivered
> > > immediately after local_irq_restore(). Of course the chance of no
> > > other
> > > random interrupt waking lock waiter is very low, but waiter can sleep
> > > for much longer then needed and this will be noticeable in
> > > performance.
> > Yes, I meant the entire thing. I did infact turned WARN on
> > w->lock==null before halt() [ though we can potentially have irq right
> > after that ], but did not hit so far.
> Depends on your workload of course. To hit that you not only need to get
> interrupt in there, but the interrupt handler needs to take contended
> spinlock.
Yes. Agree.

> > > BTW can NMI handler take spinlocks? If it can what happens if NMI is
> > > delivered in a section protected by local_irq_save()/local_irq_restore()?
> > Had another idea if NMI, halts are causing problem until I saw
> > PeterZ's reply similar to V2 of pvspinlock posted  here:
> >
> >   https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/23/211
> >
> > Instead of halt we started with a sleep hypercall in those
> >   versions. Changed to halt() once Avi suggested to reuse existing sleep.
> >
> > If we use older hypercall with few changes like below:
> >
> > kvm_pv_wait_for_kick_op(flags, vcpu, w->lock )
> > {
> >   // a0 reserved for flags
> > if (!w->lock)
> > return;
> > DEFINE_WAIT
> > ...
> > end_wait
> > }
> How would this help if NMI takes lock in critical section. The thing
> that may happen is that lock_waiting->want may have NMI lock value, but
> lock_waiting->lock will point to non NMI lock. Setting of want and lock
> have to be atomic.
True. so we are here

        non NMI lock(a)
        w->lock = NULL;
        smp_wmb();
        w->want = want;
                               NMI
                         <---------------------
                          NMI lock(b)
                          w->lock = NULL;
                          smp_wmb();
                          w->want = want;
                          smp_wmb();
                          w->lock = lock;
                         ---------------------->
        smp_wmb();
        w->lock = lock;

so how about fixing like this?

again:
        w->lock = NULL;
        smp_wmb();
        w->want = want;
        smp_wmb();
        w->lock = lock;

if (!lock || w->want != want) goto again;

> kvm_pv_wait_for_kick_op() is incorrect in other ways. It will spuriously
> return to a guest since not all events that wake up vcpu thread
> correspond to work for guest to do.
Okay. agree.

> > Only question is how to retry immediately with lock_spinning in
> > w->lock=null cases.
> >
> > /me need to experiment that again perhaps to see if we get some benefit.
> >
> > > > So I am,
> > > > 1. trying to artificially reproduce this.
> > > >
> > > > 2. I replaced the halt with below code,
> > > >         if (arch_irqs_disabled())
> > > >                  halt();
> > > >
> > > > and ran benchmarks.
> > > > But this results in degradation because, it means we again go back
> > > > and spin in irq enabled case.
> > > Yes, this is not what I proposed.
> > True.
> >
> > > > 3. Now I am analyzing the performance overhead of safe_halt in irq
> > > > enabled case.
> > > >        if (arch_irqs_disabled())
> > > >                 halt();
> > > >        else
> > > >                 safe_halt();
> > > Use of arch_irqs_disabled() is incorrect here.
> > Oops! sill me.
> >
> > If you are doing it before
> > > local_irq_restore() it will always be false since you disabled interrupt
> > > yourself,
> > This was not the case. but latter is the one I missed.
> >
> >   if you do it after then it is to late since interrupt can come
> > > between local_irq_restore() and halt() so enabling interrupt and halt
> > > are still not atomic.  You should drop local_irq_restore() and do
> > >
> > >    if (arch_irqs_disabled_flags(flags))
> > >         halt();
> > >    else
> > >         safe_halt();
> > >
> > > instead.
> > Yes, I tested with below as suggested:
> >
> > //local_irq_restore(flags);
> >
> >          /* halt until it's our turn and kicked. */
> >          if (arch_irqs_disabled_flags(flags))
> >                  halt();
> >          else
> >                  safe_halt();
> >
> >   //local_irq_save(flags);
> > I am seeing only a slight overhead, but want to give a full run to
> > check the performance.
> Without compiling and checking myself the different between previous
> code and this one should be a couple asm instruction. I would be
> surprised if you can measure it especially as vcpu is going to halt
> (and do expensive vmexit in the process) anyway.
Yes, right.


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