Re: [PATCH 0/5] vfio/pci: Fix up breakage against split irqchip and INTx

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 26/02/20 23:50, Peter Xu wrote:
> VFIO INTx is not working with split irqchip.  On new kernels KVM_IRQFD
> will directly fail with resamplefd attached so QEMU will automatically
> fallback to the INTx slow path.  However on old kernels it's still
> broken.
> 
> Only until recently I noticed that this could also break PXE boot for
> assigned NICs [1].  My wild guess is that the PXE ROM will be mostly
> using INTx as well, which means we can't bypass that even if we
> enables MSI for the guest kernel.
> 
> This series tries to first fix this issue function-wise, then speed up
> for the INTx again with resamplefd (mostly following the ideas
> proposed by Paolo one year ago [2]).  My TCP_RR test shows that:
> 
>   - Before this series: this is broken, no number to show
> 
>   - After patch 1 (enable slow path): get 63% perf comparing to full
>     kernel irqchip

Oh, I thought something like patch 1 had already been applied.

One comment: because you're bypassing IOAPIC when raising the irq, the
IOAPIC's remote_irr for example will not be set.  Most OSes probably
don't care, but it's at least worth a comment.

Paolo

>   - After whole series (enable fast path partly, irq injection will be
>     the same as fast path, however userspace needs to intercept for
>     EOI broadcast to resamplefd, though should still be faster than
>     the MMIO trick for intx eoi): get 93% perf comparing to full
>     kernel irqchip, which is a 46% performance boost