Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] target-ppc: Add POWER8E_v2.1 CPU model.

[Andrea Bolognani]

On Thu, 2015-07-09 at 12:35 +1000, Alexey Kardashevskiy wrote:
> 
> > Does "all versions of POWER8" include things like POWER8E,
> > POWER8NVL
> > and "POWER8 DD1", as one of the variations is known in the kernel
> > source? Can we safely migrate guests eg. from a POWER8 v1.0 host to
> > a POWER8E v2.1 host?
> 
> Yes. afaik the only difference between POWER8 and POWER8E is how many
> cores
> are packed into an actual chip.

If I'm reading the kernel source[1] correctly, there are actually
subtle
differences other than the number of cores:

  #define CPU_FTRS_POWER8 (/* Bunch of features here */)
  #define CPU_FTRS_POWER8E (CPU_FTRS_POWER8 | CPU_FTR_PMAO_BUG)
  #define CPU_FTRS_POWER8_DD1 (CPU_FTRS_POWER8 & ~CPU_FTR_DBELL)

Whether or not these differences will cause issues, I have no idea :)

> >  From libvirt's point of view, it would be nice to be able to
> > identify
> > as "POWER8" anything that looks like it, by matching the host's PVR
> > agains a numer of known PVRs (with relative bitmask). Ideally, if
> > the
> > host can be identified as POWER8, that's the only CPU model libvirt
> > should advertise...
> 
> I have a very little idea about libvirt here. QEMU considers
> everything
> with 0x004dxxxx and 0x004bxxxx as POWER8 (ppc_pvr_match_power8()
> helper)
> and supports migration between these.

Looking again at the kernel source[2]:

  {   /* Power8E */
      .pvr_mask               = 0xffff0000,
      .pvr_value              = 0x004b0000,
      .cpu_name               = "POWER8E (raw)",
      .cpu_features           = CPU_FTRS_POWER8E,
      .cpu_user_features      = COMMON_USER_POWER8,
      .cpu_user_features2     = COMMON_USER2_POWER8,
      .mmu_features           = MMU_FTRS_POWER8,
      .icache_bsize           = 128,
      .dcache_bsize           = 128,
      .num_pmcs               = 6,
      .pmc_type               = PPC_PMC_IBM,
      .oprofile_cpu_type      = "ppc64/power8",
      .oprofile_type          = PPC_OPROFILE_INVALID,
      .cpu_setup              = __setup_cpu_power8,
      .cpu_restore            = __restore_cpu_power8,
      .flush_tlb              = __flush_tlb_power8,
      .machine_check_early    = __machine_check_early_realmode_p8,
      .platform               = "power8",
  },
  {   /* Power8NVL */
      .pvr_mask               = 0xffff0000,
      .pvr_value              = 0x004c0000,
      .cpu_name               = "POWER8NVL (raw)",
      .cpu_features           = CPU_FTRS_POWER8,
      /* Same as above */
  },
  {   /* Power8 DD1: Does not support doorbell IPIs */
      .pvr_mask               = 0xffffff00,
      .pvr_value              = 0x004d0100,
      .cpu_name               = "POWER8 (raw)",
      .cpu_features           = CPU_FTRS_POWER8_DD1,
      /* Same as above */
  },
  {   /* Power8 */
      .pvr_mask               = 0xffff0000,
      .pvr_value              = 0x004d0000,
      .cpu_name               = "POWER8 (raw)",
      .cpu_features           = CPU_FTRS_POWER8,
      /* Same as above */
  },

So the PVR matching, as done currently in QEMU, will include POWER8DD1
but exclude POWER8NVL, which according to to commit ddee09c0 and the
code
above is absolutely identical to POWER8.

libvirt currently considers the guest CPU model to be compatible with
the host CPU model if both have the same PVR, which is clearly far from
optimal.

If we can rely on the above CPU families, as identified by pvr_value
and pvr_mask, to behave exactly the same for our purposes[3], then we
can change libvirt to perform the same kind of PVR matching as QEMU and
report to the user that the guest CPU model POWER8 is compatible with
all of the above host CPU models.

> I am adding Shiva to the coversation, he might enlighen us how this
> is
> solved by powerkvm's libvirt.

Sure, the more the merrier :)

Cheers.


[1] arch/powerpc/include/asm/cputable.h
[2] arch/powerpc/kernel/cputable.c
[3] eg. a guest running on a POWER8E host can be migrated to a
    POWER8DD1 host, despite the fact that the former has
CPU_FTR_PMAO_BUG
    and the latter lacks CPU_FTR_DBELL.
-- 
Andrea Bolognani
Software Engineer - Virtualization Team