Re: [PATCH 0/6] KVM support for TSC scaling

From: Avi Kivity
Date: Tue Feb 22 2011 - 05:42:04 EST


On 02/22/2011 12:35 PM, Roedel, Joerg wrote:
> This doesn't really work, since we don't know on what host the TSC
> calibration loop ran:
>
> - start guest on host H1
> - migrate it around, now it's on host H2
> - guest reboots, reruns calibration loop
> - migrate it around some more, now it's on host H3
> - migrate to host with tsc multiplier Hnew
>
> So, what should we set the multiplier to? H1, H2, or H3's tsc rate?

This scenario doesn't matter. If the guest already detected its TSC to
be unstable there is nothing we can do and it doesn't really matter what
we set the tsc frequency to. Therefore software will always set the
guest tsc frequency to the same value it had on the last host.

Ok, so your scenario is

- boot on host H1
- no intervening migrations
- migrate to host Hnew
- all succeeding migrations are only to new hosts or back to H1

This is somewhat artificial, and not very different from an all-new cluster.

[the whole thing is kind of sad; we went through a huge effort to make clocks work on virtual machines in spite of the tsc issues; then we have a hardware solution, but can't use it because of old hardware. Same thing happens with the effort put into shadow in the pre-npt days]

--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/