[PATCH 0/9] KVM: arm64: Use MMU read lock for clearing dirty logs

From: Vipin Sharma
Date: Fri Apr 21 2023 - 12:59:38 EST


This patch series improves guest vCPUs performances on Arm during clearing
dirty log operations by taking MMU read lock instead of MMU write lock.

vCPUs write protection faults are fixed in Arm using MMU read locks.
However, when userspace is clearing dirty logs via KVM_CLEAR_DIRTY_LOG
ioctl, then kernel code takes MMU write lock. This will block vCPUs
write protection faults and degrade guest performance. This
degradation gets worse as guest VM size increases in terms of memory and
vCPU count.

In this series, MMU read lock adoption is made possible by using
KVM_PGTABLE_WALK_SHARED flag in page walker.

Patches 1 to 5:
These patches are modifying dirty_log_perf_test. Intent is to mimic
production scenarios where guest keeps on executing while userspace
threads collect and clear dirty logs independently.

Three new command line options are added:
1. j: Allows to run guest vCPUs and main thread collecting dirty logs
independently of each other after initialization is complete.
2. k: Allows to clear dirty logs in smaller chunks compared to existing
whole memslot clear in one call.
3. l: Allows to add customizable wait time between consecutive clear
dirty log calls to mimic sending dirty memory to destination.

Patch 7-8:
These patches refactor code to move MMU lock operations to arch specific
code, refactor Arm's page table walker APIs, and change MMU write lock
for clearing dirty logs to read lock. Patch 8 has results showing
improvements based on dirty_log_perf_test.

Vipin Sharma (9):
KVM: selftests: Allow dirty_log_perf_test to clear dirty memory in
chunks
KVM: selftests: Add optional delay between consecutive Clear-Dirty-Log
calls
KVM: selftests: Pass count of read and write accesses from guest to
host
KVM: selftests: Print read and write accesses of pages by vCPUs in
dirty_log_perf_test
KVM: selftests: Allow independent execution of vCPUs in
dirty_log_perf_test
KVM: arm64: Correct the kvm_pgtable_stage2_flush() documentation
KVM: mmu: Move mmu lock/unlock to arch code for clear dirty log
KMV: arm64: Allow stage2_apply_range_sched() to pass page table walker
flags
KVM: arm64: Run clear-dirty-log under MMU read lock

arch/arm64/include/asm/kvm_pgtable.h | 17 ++-
arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/mem_protect.c | 4 +-
arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/pgtable.c | 16 ++-
arch/arm64/kvm/mmu.c | 36 ++++--
arch/mips/kvm/mmu.c | 2 +
arch/riscv/kvm/mmu.c | 2 +
arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c | 3 +
.../selftests/kvm/dirty_log_perf_test.c | 108 ++++++++++++++----
.../testing/selftests/kvm/include/memstress.h | 13 ++-
tools/testing/selftests/kvm/lib/memstress.c | 43 +++++--
virt/kvm/dirty_ring.c | 2 -
virt/kvm/kvm_main.c | 4 -
12 files changed, 185 insertions(+), 65 deletions(-)


base-commit: 95b9779c1758f03cf494e8550d6249a40089ed1c
--
2.40.0.634.g4ca3ef3211-goog