• Sean Christopherson's avatar
    KVM: x86: Drop support for hand tuning APIC timer advancement from userspace · 89a58812
    Sean Christopherson authored
    Remove support for specifying a static local APIC timer advancement value,
    and instead present a read-only boolean parameter to let userspace enable
    or disable KVM's dynamic APIC timer advancement.  Realistically, it's all
    but impossible for userspace to specify an advancement that is more
    precise than what KVM's adaptive tuning can provide.  E.g. a static value
    needs to be tuned for the exact hardware and kernel, and if KVM is using
    hrtimers, likely requires additional tuning for the exact configuration of
    the entire system.
    
    Dropping support for a userspace provided value also fixes several flaws
    in the interface.  E.g. KVM interprets a negative value other than -1 as a
    large advancement, toggling between a negative and positive value yields
    unpredictable behavior as vCPUs will switch from dynamic to static
    advancement, changing the advancement in the middle of VM creation can
    result in different values for vCPUs within a VM, etc.  Those flaws are
    mostly fixable, but there's almost no justification for taking on yet more
    complexity (it's minimal complexity, but still non-zero).
    
    The only arguments against using KVM's adaptive tuning is if a setup needs
    a higher maximum, or if the adjustments are too reactive, but those are
    arguments for letting userspace control the absolute max advancement and
    the granularity of each adjustment, e.g. similar to how KVM provides knobs
    for halt polling.
    
    Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20240520115334.852510-1-zhoushuling@huawei.com
    Cc: Shuling Zhou <zhoushuling@huawei.com>
    Cc: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarSean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
    Message-ID: <20240522010304.1650603-1-seanjc@google.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarPaolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
    89a58812
x86.c 373 KB