Re: [PATCH] kvm: VMX: do not use vm-exit instruction length for fast MMIO

From: "Radim Krčmář" <rkrcmar@redhat.com>
To: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>
Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kvm@vger.kernel.org,
	stable@vger.kernel.org, Jason Wang <jasowang@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] kvm: VMX: do not use vm-exit instruction length for fast MMIO
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2017 18:56:25 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20170816165625.GA32542@flask> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20170816170843-mutt-send-email-mst@kernel.org>

2017-08-16 17:10+0300, Michael S. Tsirkin:
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 03:34:54PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> > Microsoft pointed out privately to me that KVM's handling of
> > KVM_FAST_MMIO_BUS is invalid.  Using skip_emulation_instruction is invalid
> > in EPT misconfiguration vmexit handlers, because neither EPT violations
> > nor misconfigurations are listed in the manual among the VM exits that
> > set the VM-exit instruction length field.
> > 
> > While physical processors seem to set the field, this is not architectural
> > and is just a side effect of the implementation.  I couldn't convince
> > myself of any condition on the exit qualification where VM-exit
> > instruction length "has" to be defined; there are no trap-like VM-exits
> > that can be repurposed; and fault-like VM-exits such as descriptor-table
> > exits provide no decoding information.  So I don't really see any way
> > to keep the full speedup.
> > 
> > What we can do is use EMULTYPE_SKIP; it only saves 200 clock cycles
> > because computing the physical RIP and reading the instruction is
> > expensive, but at least the eventfd is signaled before entering the
> > emulator.  This saves on latency.  While at it, don't check breakpoints
> > when skipping the instruction, as presumably any side effect has been
> > exposed already.
> > 
> > Adding a hypercall or MSR write that does a fast MMIO write to a physical
> > address would do it, but it adds hypervisor knowledge in virtio, including
> > CPUID handling.  So it would be pretty ugly in the guest-side implementation,
> > but if somebody wants to do it and the virtio side is acceptable to the
> > virtio maintainers, I am okay with it.
> > 
> > Cc: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
> > Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
> > Fixes: 68c3b4d1676d870f0453c31d5a52e7e65c7448ae
> > Suggested-by: Radim Krčmář <rkrcmar@redhat.com>
> > Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
> 
> Jason (cc) who worked on the original optimization said he can
> work to test the performance impact.
> I suggest we don't rush this (it's been like this for 2 years),
> and the issue seems to be largely theoretical.

Paolo, did Microsoft point it out because they hit the bug when running
KVM on Hyper-V?

Thanks.