Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH v2 00/21] Guest exploitation of the XIVE interrupt controller (POWER9)

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

On Wed, 2017-09-20 at 14:33 +0200, Cédric Le Goater wrote:
> > > I'm thinking maybe trying to support the CAS negotiation of interrupt
> > > controller from day 1 is warping the design.  A better approach might
> > > be first to implement XIVE only when given a specific machine option -
> > > guest gets one or the other and can't negotiate.
> 
> ok. 
> 
> CAS is not the most complex problem, we mostly need to share 
> the ICSIRQState array and the source offset. migration from older
> machine is a problem. We are doomed to keep the existing XICS
> framework available.

I don't like sharing anything. I'd rather we had separate objects
alltogether. If needed we can implement CAS by doing a partition reboot
like pHyp does, at least initially, until we add ways to tear down and
rebuild objects.

The main issue is whether we can keep a consistent number space so the
DT doesn't have to be completely rebuilt. If it does, then reboot will
be the only practical option I'm afraid.

> > > That should allow a more natural XIVE design to emerge, *then* we can
> > > look at what's necessary to make boot-time negotiation possible.
> > 
> > Actually, it just occurred to me that we might be making life hard for
> > ourselves by trying to actually switch between full XICS and XIVE
> > models.  Coudln't we have new machine types always construct the XIVE
> > infrastructure, 
> 
> yes.
> 
> > but then implement the XICS RTAS and hcalls in terms of the XIVE virtual 
> > hardware.

That's gross :-)

This is also exactly what KVM does with real XIVE HW and there's also
such an emulation in OPAL. I'd be weary of creating a 3rd one...

I'd much prefer if we managed to:

 - Split the source numbering from the various state tracking objects
so we can have that common

 - Either delay the creation to after CAS or tear down & re-create the
state tracking objects at CAS time.

> ok but migration will not be supported.
> 
> > Since something more or less equivalent
> > has already been done in both OPAL and the host kernel, I'm guessing
> > this shouldn't be too hard at this point.

It would very much suck to have yet another one of these.

Also we need to understand how that would work in a KVM context, the
kernel will provide a "XICS" state even on top of XIVE unless we switch
the kernel object to native, but then the kernel will expect full
exploitation.

> Indeed that is how it is working currently on P9 kvm guests. hcalls are
> implemented on top of XIVE native.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> 
> C.