]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/libvirt.git/commit
qemu: Add capability for the ccf-assist pSeries feature
authorDaniel Henrique Barboza <danielhb413@gmail.com>
Tue, 8 Oct 2019 20:06:23 +0000 (17:06 -0300)
committerCole Robinson <crobinso@redhat.com>
Wed, 9 Oct 2019 21:45:09 +0000 (17:45 -0400)
commit86a8e5a84cb6251748925163345c688e0ea794fa
treefa28389cc01837595942d1e5b944eea42150c01c
parentfd03d0e692b9b8c71d6b2ae111ee0c8671b61125
qemu: Add capability for the ccf-assist pSeries feature

Linux kernel 5.1 added a new PPC KVM capability named
KVM_PPC_CPU_CHAR_BCCTR_FLUSH_ASSIST, which is exposed to the QEMU guest
since QEMU commit 8ff43ee404d under a new sPAPR capability called
SPAPR_CAP_CCF_ASSIST. This cap indicates whether the processor supports
hardware acceleration for the count cache flush workaround, which
is a software workaround that flushes the count cache on context
switch. If the processor has this hardware acceleration, the software
flush can be shortened, resulting in performance gain.

This hardware acceleration is defaulted to 'off' in QEMU. The reason
is that earlier versions of the Power 9 processor didn't support
it (it is available on Power 9 DD2.3 and newer), and defaulting this
option to 'on' would break migration compatibility between the Power 9
processor class.

However, the user running a P9 DD2.3+ hypervisor might want to create
guests with ccf-assist=on, accepting the downside of only being able
to migrate them only between other P9 DD2.3+ hosts running upstream
kernel 5.1+, to get a performance boost.

This patch adds this new capability to Libvirt, with the name of
QEMU_CAPS_MACHINE_PSERIES_CAP_CCF_ASSIST.

Reviewed-by: Cole Robinson <crobinso@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Henrique Barboza <danielhb413@gmail.com>
src/qemu/qemu_capabilities.c
src/qemu/qemu_capabilities.h
tests/qemucapabilitiesdata/caps_4.0.0.ppc64.xml