Some software algorithms are based on the hardware's cache info, for example,
for x86 linux kernel, when cpu1 want to wakeup a task on cpu2, cpu1 will trigger
a resched IPI and told cpu2 to do the wakeup if they don't share low level
cache. Oppositely, cpu1 will access cpu2's runqueue directly if they share llc.
The relevant linux-kernel code as bellow:
static void ttwu_queue(struct task_struct *p, int cpu)
{
struct rq *rq = cpu_rq(cpu);
......
if (... && !cpus_share_cache(smp_processor_id(), cpu)) {
......
ttwu_queue_remote(p, cpu); /* will trigger RES IPI */
return;
}
......
ttwu_do_activate(rq, p, 0); /* access target's rq directly */
......
}
In real hardware, the cpus on the same socket share L3 cache, so one won't
trigger a resched IPIs when wakeup a task on others. But QEMU doesn't present a
virtual L3 cache info for VM, then the linux guest will trigger lots of RES IPIs
under some workloads even if the virtual cpus belongs to the same virtual socket.
For KVM, there will be lots of vmexit due to guest send IPIs.
The workload is a SAP HANA's testsuite, we run it one round(about 40 minuates)
and observe the (Suse11sp3)Guest's amounts of RES IPIs which triggering during
the period:
No-L3 With-L3(applied this patch)
cpu0: 363890 44582
cpu1: 373405 43109
cpu2: 340783 43797
cpu3: 333854 43409
cpu4: 327170 40038
cpu5: 325491 39922
cpu6: 319129 42391
cpu7: 306480 41035
cpu8: 161139 32188
cpu9: 164649 31024
cpu10: 149823 30398
cpu11: 149823 32455
cpu12: 164830 35143
cpu13: 172269 35805
cpu14: 179979 33898
cpu15: 194505 32754
avg: 268963.6 40129.8
The VM's topology is "1*socket 8*cores 2*threads".
After present virtual L3 cache info for VM, the amounts of RES IPIs in guest
reduce 85%.
For KVM, vcpus send IPIs will cause vmexit which is expensive, so it can cause
severe performance degradation. We had tested the overall system performance if
vcpus actually run on sparate physical socket. With L3 cache, the performance
improves 7.2%~33.1%(avg:15.7%).
Signed-off-by: Longpeng(Mike) <longpeng2@huawei.com>
Reviewed-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com>
QEMU README
===========
QEMU is a generic and open source machine & userspace emulator and
virtualizer.
QEMU is capable of emulating a complete machine in software without any
need for hardware virtualization support. By using dynamic translation,
it achieves very good performance. QEMU can also integrate with the Xen
and KVM hypervisors to provide emulated hardware while allowing the
hypervisor to manage the CPU. With hypervisor support, QEMU can achieve
near native performance for CPUs. When QEMU emulates CPUs directly it is
capable of running operating systems made for one machine (e.g. an ARMv7
board) on a different machine (e.g. an x86_64 PC board).
QEMU is also capable of providing userspace API virtualization for Linux
and BSD kernel interfaces. This allows binaries compiled against one
architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux PPC64 ABI) to be run on a host using a
different architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux x86_64 ABI). This does not
involve any hardware emulation, simply CPU and syscall emulation.
QEMU aims to fit into a variety of use cases. It can be invoked directly
by users wishing to have full control over its behaviour and settings.
It also aims to facilitate integration into higher level management
layers, by providing a stable command line interface and monitor API.
It is commonly invoked indirectly via the libvirt library when using
open source applications such as oVirt, OpenStack and virt-manager.
QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License,
version 2. For full licensing details, consult the LICENSE file.
Building
========
QEMU is multi-platform software intended to be buildable on all modern
Linux platforms, OS-X, Win32 (via the Mingw64 toolchain) and a variety
of other UNIX targets. The simple steps to build QEMU are:
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
Complete details of the process for building and configuring QEMU for
all supported host platforms can be found in the qemu-tech.html file.
Additional information can also be found online via the QEMU website:
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/Linux
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/W32
Submitting patches
==================
The QEMU source code is maintained under the GIT version control system.
git clone git://git.qemu-project.org/qemu.git
When submitting patches, the preferred approach is to use 'git
format-patch' and/or 'git send-email' to format & send the mail to the
qemu-devel@nongnu.org mailing list. All patches submitted must contain
a 'Signed-off-by' line from the author. Patches should follow the
guidelines set out in the HACKING and CODING_STYLE files.
Additional information on submitting patches can be found online via
the QEMU website
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches
Bug reporting
=============
The QEMU project uses Launchpad as its primary upstream bug tracker. Bugs
found when running code built from QEMU git or upstream released sources
should be reported via:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/
If using QEMU via an operating system vendor pre-built binary package, it
is preferable to report bugs to the vendor's own bug tracker first. If
the bug is also known to affect latest upstream code, it can also be
reported via launchpad.
For additional information on bug reporting consult:
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/ReportABug
Contact
=======
The QEMU community can be contacted in a number of ways, with the two
main methods being email and IRC
- qemu-devel@nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
- #qemu on irc.oftc.net
Information on additional methods of contacting the community can be
found online via the QEMU website:
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/StartHere
-- End