Re: [PATCH v2] KVM: x86: Service NMI requests after PMI requests in VM-Enter path

[Sean Christopherson]

On Mon, 02 Oct 2023 04:08:39 +0000, Mingwei Zhang wrote:
> Service NMI requests after PMI requests in vcpu_enter_guest() so that KVM
> does not need to cancel and redo the VM-Enter. Because APIC emulation
> "injects" NMIs via KVM_REQ_NMI, handling PMI requests after NMI requests
> means KVM won't detect the pending NMI request until the final check for
> outstanding requests. Detecting requests at the final stage is costly as
> KVM has already loaded guest state, potentially queued events for
> injection, disabled IRQs, dropped SRCU, etc., most of which needs to be
> unwound.
> 
> [...]

Applied to kvm-x86 pmu, thanks!

I made a tweak to the code and massaged one part of the changelog.  For the
code, I hoisted PMU/PMI above SMI too, mainly to keep SMI+NMI together, but
also because *technically* the guest could configure LVTPC to send an SMI (LOL).

Regarding the changelog, I replaced the justification about correctness with
this:

    Note that changing the order of request processing doesn't change the end
    result, as KVM's final check for outstanding requests prevents entering
    the guest until all requests are serviced.  I.e. KVM will ultimately
    coalesce events (or not) regardless of the ordering.
    
The architectural behavior of NMIs and KVM's unintuitive simultaneous NMI
handling simply doesn't matter as far as this patch is concerned, especially
when considering the SMI technicality.  E.g. the net effect would be the same
even if KVM allowed only a single NMIs.

Please holler if you disagree with either/both of the above changes.

[1/1] KVM: x86: Service NMI requests after PMI requests in VM-Enter path
      https://github.com/kvm-x86/linux/commit/4b09cc132a59

--
https://github.com/kvm-x86/linux/tree/next