KVM: PPC: Book3S HV: Implement halt polling

This patch introduces new halt polling functionality into the kvm_hv kernel
module. When a vcore is idle it will poll for some period of time before
scheduling itself out.

When all of the runnable vcpus on a vcore have ceded (and thus the vcore is
idle) we schedule ourselves out to allow something else to run. In the
event that we need to wake up very quickly (for example an interrupt
arrives), we are required to wait until we get scheduled again.

Implement halt polling so that when a vcore is idle, and before scheduling
ourselves, we poll for vcpus in the runnable_threads list which have
pending exceptions or which leave the ceded state. If we poll successfully
then we can get back into the guest very quickly without ever scheduling
ourselves, otherwise we schedule ourselves out as before.

There exists generic halt_polling code in virt/kvm_main.c, however on
powerpc the polling conditions are different to the generic case. It would
be nice if we could just implement an arch specific kvm_check_block()
function, but there is still other arch specific things which need to be
done for kvm_hv (for example manipulating vcore states) which means that a
separate implementation is the best option.

Testing of this patch with a TCP round robin test between two guests with
virtio network interfaces has found a decrease in round trip time of ~15us
on average. A performance gain is only seen when going out of and
back into the guest often and quickly, otherwise there is no net benefit
from the polling. The polling interval is adjusted such that when we are
often scheduled out for long periods of time it is reduced, and when we
often poll successfully it is increased. The rate at which the polling
interval increases or decreases, and the maximum polling interval, can
be set through module parameters.

Based on the implementation in the generic kvm module by Wanpeng Li and
Paolo Bonzini, and on direction from Paul Mackerras.

Signed-off-by: Suraj Jitindar Singh <sjitindarsingh@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/arch/powerpc/include/asm/kvm_book3s.h b/arch/powerpc/include/asm/kvm_book3s.h
index 151f8173e596..c261f52f6a55 100644
--- a/arch/powerpc/include/asm/kvm_book3s.h
+++ b/arch/powerpc/include/asm/kvm_book3s.h
@@ -102,6 +102,7 @@ struct kvmppc_vcore {
 	ulong pcr;
 	ulong dpdes;		/* doorbell state (POWER8) */
 	ulong conferring_threads;
+	unsigned int halt_poll_ns;
 };
 
 struct kvmppc_vcpu_book3s {