icount has become much slower after tcg_cpu_exec has stopped
using the BQL. There is also a latent bug that is masked by
the slowness.
The slowness happens because every occurrence of a QEMU_CLOCK_VIRTUAL
timer now has to wake up the I/O thread and wait for it. The rendez-vous
is mediated by the BQL QemuMutex:
- handle_icount_deadline wakes up the I/O thread with BQL taken
- the I/O thread wakes up and waits on the BQL
- the VCPU thread releases the BQL a little later
- the I/O thread raises an interrupt, which calls qemu_cpu_kick
- the VCPU thread notices the interrupt, takes the BQL to
process it and waits on it
All this back and forth is extremely expensive, causing a 6 to 8-fold
slowdown when icount is turned on.
One may think that the issue is that the VCPU thread is too dependent
on the BQL, but then the latent bug comes in. I first tried removing
the BQL completely from the x86 cpu_exec, only to see everything break.
The only way to fix it (and make everything slow again) was to add a dummy
BQL lock/unlock pair.
This is because in -icount mode you really have to process the events
before the CPU restarts executing the next instruction. Therefore, this
series moves the processing of QEMU_CLOCK_VIRTUAL timers straight in
the vCPU thread when running in icount mode.
The required changes include:
- make the timer notification callback wake up TCG's single vCPU thread
when run from another thread. By using async_run_on_cpu, the callback
can override all_cpu_threads_idle() when the CPU is halted.
- move handle_icount_deadline after qemu_tcg_wait_io_event, so that
the timer notification callback is invoked after the dummy work item
wakes up the vCPU thread
- make handle_icount_deadline run the timers instead of just waking the
I/O thread.
- stop processing the timers in the main loop
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
QEMU README
===========
QEMU is a generic and open source machine & userspace emulator and
virtualizer.
QEMU is capable of emulating a complete machine in software without any
need for hardware virtualization support. By using dynamic translation,
it achieves very good performance. QEMU can also integrate with the Xen
and KVM hypervisors to provide emulated hardware while allowing the
hypervisor to manage the CPU. With hypervisor support, QEMU can achieve
near native performance for CPUs. When QEMU emulates CPUs directly it is
capable of running operating systems made for one machine (e.g. an ARMv7
board) on a different machine (e.g. an x86_64 PC board).
QEMU is also capable of providing userspace API virtualization for Linux
and BSD kernel interfaces. This allows binaries compiled against one
architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux PPC64 ABI) to be run on a host using a
different architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux x86_64 ABI). This does not
involve any hardware emulation, simply CPU and syscall emulation.
QEMU aims to fit into a variety of use cases. It can be invoked directly
by users wishing to have full control over its behaviour and settings.
It also aims to facilitate integration into higher level management
layers, by providing a stable command line interface and monitor API.
It is commonly invoked indirectly via the libvirt library when using
open source applications such as oVirt, OpenStack and virt-manager.
QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License,
version 2. For full licensing details, consult the LICENSE file.
Building
========
QEMU is multi-platform software intended to be buildable on all modern
Linux platforms, OS-X, Win32 (via the Mingw64 toolchain) and a variety
of other UNIX targets. The simple steps to build QEMU are:
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
Additional information can also be found online via the QEMU website:
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/Linux
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/Mac
http://qemu-project.org/Hosts/W32
Submitting patches
==================
The QEMU source code is maintained under the GIT version control system.
git clone git://git.qemu-project.org/qemu.git
When submitting patches, the preferred approach is to use 'git
format-patch' and/or 'git send-email' to format & send the mail to the
qemu-devel@nongnu.org mailing list. All patches submitted must contain
a 'Signed-off-by' line from the author. Patches should follow the
guidelines set out in the HACKING and CODING_STYLE files.
Additional information on submitting patches can be found online via
the QEMU website
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches
Bug reporting
=============
The QEMU project uses Launchpad as its primary upstream bug tracker. Bugs
found when running code built from QEMU git or upstream released sources
should be reported via:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/
If using QEMU via an operating system vendor pre-built binary package, it
is preferable to report bugs to the vendor's own bug tracker first. If
the bug is also known to affect latest upstream code, it can also be
reported via launchpad.
For additional information on bug reporting consult:
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/ReportABug
Contact
=======
The QEMU community can be contacted in a number of ways, with the two
main methods being email and IRC
- qemu-devel@nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel
- #qemu on irc.oftc.net
Information on additional methods of contacting the community can be
found online via the QEMU website:
http://qemu-project.org/Contribute/StartHere
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