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[Qemu-devel] [RFC v8 00/14] Slow-path for atomic instruction translation


From: Alvise Rigo
Subject: [Qemu-devel] [RFC v8 00/14] Slow-path for atomic instruction translation
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2016 15:39:17 +0200

This is the eighth iteration of the patch series which applies to the
upstream branch of QEMU (v2.5.0+).

Changes versus previous versions are at the bottom of this cover letter.

The code is also available at following repository:
https://git.virtualopensystems.com/dev/qemu-mt.git
branch:
slowpath-for-atomic-v8-no-mttcg

This patch series provides an infrastructure for atomic instruction
implementation in QEMU, thus offering a 'legacy' solution for
translating guest atomic instructions. Moreover, it can be considered as
a first step toward a multi-thread TCG.

The underlying idea is to provide new TCG helpers (sort of softmmu
helpers) that guarantee atomicity to some memory accesses or in general
a way to define memory transactions.

More specifically, the new softmmu helpers behave as LoadLink and
StoreConditional instructions, and are called from TCG code by means of
target specific helpers. This work includes the implementation for all
the ARM atomic instructions, see target-arm/op_helper.c.

The implementation heavily uses the software TLB together with a new
bitmap that has been added to the ram_list structure which flags, on a
per-CPU basis, all the memory pages that are in the middle of a LoadLink
(LL), StoreConditional (SC) operation.  Since all these pages can be
accessed directly through the fast-path and alter a vCPU's linked value,
the new bitmap has been coupled with a new TLB flag for the TLB virtual
address which forces the slow-path execution for all the accesses to a
page containing a linked address.

The new slow-path is implemented such that:
- the LL behaves as a normal load slow-path, except for clearing the
  dirty flag in the bitmap.  The cputlb.c code while generating a TLB
  entry, checks if there is at least one vCPU that has the bit cleared
  in the exclusive bitmap, it that case the TLB entry will have the EXCL
  flag set, thus forcing the slow-path.  In order to ensure that all the
  vCPUs will follow the slow-path for that page, we flush the TLB cache
  of all the other vCPUs.

  The LL will also set the linked address and size of the access in a
  vCPU's private variable. After the corresponding SC, this address will
  be set to a reset value.

- the SC can fail returning 1, or succeed, returning 0.  It has to come
  always after a LL and has to access the same address 'linked' by the
  previous LL, otherwise it will fail. If in the time window delimited
  by a legit pair of LL/SC operations another write access happens to
  the linked address, the SC will fail.

In theory, the provided implementation of TCG LoadLink/StoreConditional
can be used to properly handle atomic instructions on any architecture.

The code has been tested with bare-metal test cases and by booting Linux.

* Performance considerations
The new slow-path adds some overhead to the translation of the ARM
atomic instructions, since their emulation doesn't happen anymore only
in the guest (by means of pure TCG generated code), but requires the
execution of two helpers functions. Despite this, the additional time
required to boot an ARM Linux kernel on an i7 clocked at 2.5GHz is
negligible.
Instead, on a LL/SC bound test scenario - like:
https://git.virtualopensystems.com/dev/tcg_baremetal_tests.git - this
solution requires 30% (1 million iterations) and 70% (10 millions
iterations) of additional time for the test to complete.

Changes from v7:
- softmmu_template.h refactoring for a more consistent reduction of
  code duplication
- Simplified the patches introducing MMIO support for exclusive accesses
- Addressed all comments from Alex

Changes from v6:
- Included aligned variants of the exclusive helpers
- Reverted to single bit per page design in DIRTY_MEMORY_EXCLUSIVE
  bitmap. The new way we restore the pages as non-exclusive (PATCH 13)
  made the per-VCPU design unnecessary.
- arm32 now uses aligned exclusive accesses
- aarch64 exclusive instructions implemented [PATCH 15-16]
- Addressed comments from Alex

Changes from v5:
- The exclusive memory region is now set through a CPUClass hook,
  allowing any architecture to decide the memory area that will be
  protected during a LL/SC operation [PATCH 3]
- The runtime helpers dropped any target dependency and are now in a
  common file [PATCH 5]
- Improved the way we restore a guest page as non-exclusive [PATCH 9]
- Included MMIO memory as possible target of LL/SC
  instructions. This also required to somehow simplify the
  helper_*_st_name helpers in softmmu_template.h [PATCH 8-14]

Changes from v4:
- Reworked the exclusive bitmap to be of fixed size (8 bits per address)
- The slow-path is now TCG backend independent, no need to touch
  tcg/* anymore as suggested by Aurelien Jarno.

Changes from v3:
- based on upstream QEMU
- addressed comments from Alex Bennée
- the slow path can be enabled by the user with:
  ./configure --enable-tcg-ldst-excl only if the backend supports it
- all the ARM ldex/stex instructions make now use of the slow path
- added aarch64 TCG backend support
- part of the code has been rewritten

Changes from v2:
- the bitmap accessors are now atomic
- a rendezvous between vCPUs and a simple callback support before executing
  a TB have been added to handle the TLB flush support
- the softmmu_template and softmmu_llsc_template have been adapted to work
  on real multi-threading

Changes from v1:
- The ram bitmap is not reversed anymore, 1 = dirty, 0 = exclusive
- The way how the offset to access the bitmap is calculated has
  been improved and fixed
- A page to be set as dirty requires a vCPU to target the protected address
  and not just an address in the page
- Addressed comments from Richard Henderson to improve the logic in
  softmmu_template.h and to simplify the methods generation through
  softmmu_llsc_template.h
- Added initial implementation of qemu_{ldlink,stcond}_i32 for tcg/i386

This work has been sponsored by Huawei Technologies Duesseldorf GmbH.

Alvise Rigo (14):
  exec.c: Add new exclusive bitmap to ram_list
  softmmu: Simplify helper_*_st_name, wrap unaligned code
  softmmu: Simplify helper_*_st_name, wrap MMIO code
  softmmu: Simplify helper_*_st_name, wrap RAM code
  softmmu: Add new TLB_EXCL flag
  qom: cpu: Add CPUClass hooks for exclusive range
  softmmu: Add helpers for a new slowpath
  softmmu: Add history of excl accesses
  softmmu: Honor the new exclusive bitmap
  softmmu: Support MMIO exclusive accesses
  tcg: Create new runtime helpers for excl accesses
  target-arm: translate: Use ld/st excl for atomic insns
  target-arm: cpu64: use custom set_excl hook
  target-arm: aarch64: Use ls/st exclusive for atomic insns

 Makefile.target             |   2 +-
 cputlb.c                    |  64 ++++++++++-
 exec.c                      |  21 +++-
 include/exec/cpu-all.h      |   8 ++
 include/exec/helper-gen.h   |   3 +
 include/exec/helper-proto.h |   1 +
 include/exec/helper-tcg.h   |   3 +
 include/exec/memory.h       |   4 +-
 include/exec/ram_addr.h     |  31 +++++
 include/qom/cpu.h           |  33 ++++++
 qom/cpu.c                   |  29 +++++
 softmmu_llsc_template.h     | 136 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 softmmu_template.h          | 274 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
 target-arm/cpu.h            |   3 +
 target-arm/cpu64.c          |   8 ++
 target-arm/helper-a64.c     |  55 +++++++++
 target-arm/helper-a64.h     |   2 +
 target-arm/helper.h         |   2 +
 target-arm/machine.c        |   7 ++
 target-arm/op_helper.c      |  14 ++-
 target-arm/translate-a64.c  | 168 +++++++++++++++------------
 target-arm/translate.c      | 263 +++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------
 tcg-llsc-helper.c           | 104 +++++++++++++++++
 tcg-llsc-helper.h           |  61 ++++++++++
 tcg/tcg-llsc-gen-helper.h   |  67 +++++++++++
 tcg/tcg.h                   |  31 +++++
 vl.c                        |   3 +
 27 files changed, 1110 insertions(+), 287 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 softmmu_llsc_template.h
 create mode 100644 tcg-llsc-helper.c
 create mode 100644 tcg-llsc-helper.h
 create mode 100644 tcg/tcg-llsc-gen-helper.h

-- 
2.8.0




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