Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] [HVM][SVM] Handle threshold register for guests

["Christoph Egger" <Christoph.Egger@xxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 24 May 2007 13:00:10 Petersson, Mats wrote:

> > On 21/5/07 18:24, "Christoph Egger" <Christoph.Egger@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > The threshold register has been introduced in AMD RevF CPUs
> > > along with SVM (Actually this MCA/MCE msr register existed before,
> > > but had no meaning).
> > > Therefore no need for additional cpuid checks.
> > >
> > > On read access it reports the HVM guest the register has
> > > been locked by the BIOS. This means, it is not available for OS use.
> > > Thus, write accesses are simply ignored.
> > > This behaviour actually matches real HW, so guests can deal with this.
> > > Further, this way no multiplexing for multiple guests is necessary.
> > > Please apply.
> >
> > I can't find any information about the revised semantics of
> > M4_MISC in the latest revision (3.12) of Volume 2 of the
> > AMD64 Architecture Programmer's Manual. Am I looking in the wrong place?
> >
> > Since we don't advertise SVM capability to guests, wouldn't
> > they assume old semantics for this register anyway?
>
> Yes, you're looking in the wrong place the APM is for "generic
> functionality", the BIOS and Kernel Developer's Guide (BKDG) is more
> specific as to implementation details for the different generations, and
> on page 225 [public version], you'll find the details of this register.
>
> http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/
> 32559.pdf
>
> As to whether the processor expects this behaviour or not is a different
> question. But let's say they use the family/model CPUID info to identify
> if this feature is available or not, rather than the more loosely
> coupled feature-bit of SVM (e.g. a Sempron Rev F processor would have
> the functionality in this register, but no SVM bit set as it's not got
> SVM-feature).

The code the patch adds will never run on these CPUs, so no problem.

> I think the patch is OK to support any future OS that MAY try to use
> this register. It's not harming anything, right?

Yes, that's right.

<side node>
Linux/x86_64 does the threshold counting in software, but
it reads the HW register at boot time one time for each CPU
to get a value where to start counting from. With
my patch, Linux does not find the threshold register marked as
not being available for OS use and starts counting from zero
for sure.
</side node>


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