Re: [Qemu-devel] How many msi-x vectors should be allocated for the virtio-serial device?

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 10:13:11AM +0200, Gal Hammer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> How many msi-x vectors should be allocated for the virtio-serial device?
> 
> I'm asking this as it seems that a proposed patch
> (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2011-12/msg02094.html)
> was not accepted and I re-encountered this issue while trying to
> upgrade the virtio-serial's Windows driver to use msi-x vectors.
> 
> The virtio-serial's Linux module tries to use one vector per
> virtqueue (every serial port have two virtqueues) with a fall back
> to using only two vectors
> (http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v3.7.2/drivers/virtio/virtio_pci.c#L539).
> The problem is that qemu's virtio-pci device allocate less vectors
> than the modules expects. So, for example, if a serial device have
> 16 ports, 17 vectors are allocated. The module tries to use 34
> vectors, fails and choose to use only 2, leaving 15 unused vectors.
> 
> Is it possible to increase the vectors number from
> "proxy->serial.max_virtserial_ports + 1" to
> "(proxy->serial.max_virtserial_ports + 1) * 2"?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
>     Gal.

Allocated MSI-X vectors on x86 are a limited resource.  Let's not waste
them. From what you say virtio serial works fine with two
vectors and I do not see any reason to let us use more
until someone can show an important workload where this helps.

So I think we need something like the below, but we also
need to handle 1.3 and older compatibility so the
patch below shouldn't be applied. Want to try
writing up the complete patch?

-->

serial: use 2 vectors by default

Guests only utilize 2 vectors and this seems to be enough,
so let's only allocate as much.
serial is likely not so performance intensive to require more,
but if yes users can always override the nvectors property.

Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <address@hidden>

---

diff --git a/hw/virtio-pci.c b/hw/virtio-pci.c
index 9abbcdf..bb0f60e 100644
--- a/hw/virtio-pci.c
+++ b/hw/virtio-pci.c
@@ -975,8 +975,7 @@ static int virtio_serial_init_pci(PCIDevice *pci_dev)
     if (!vdev) {
         return -1;
     }
-    vdev->nvectors = proxy->nvectors == DEV_NVECTORS_UNSPECIFIED
-                                        ? proxy->serial.max_virtserial_ports + 
1
+    vdev->nvectors = proxy->nvectors == DEV_NVECTORS_UNSPECIFIED ? 2
                                         : proxy->nvectors;
     virtio_init_pci(proxy, vdev);
     proxy->nvectors = vdev->nvectors;
-- 
MST