This patch partially implements the e1000 interrupt mitigation mechanisms.
Using a single QEMUTimer, it emulates the ITR register (which is the newer
mitigation register, recommended by Intel) and approximately emulates
RADV and TADV registers. TIDV and RDTR register functionalities are not
emulated (RDTR is only used to validate RADV, according to the e1000 specs).
RADV, TADV, TIDV and RDTR registers make up the older e1000 mitigation
mechanism and would need a timer each to be completely emulated. However,
a single timer has been used in order to reach a good compromise between
emulation accuracy and simplicity/efficiency.
The implemented mechanism can be enabled/disabled specifying the command
line e1000-specific boolean parameter "mitigation", e.g.
qemu-system-x86_64 -device e1000,mitigation=on,... ...
For more information, see the Software developer's manual at
http://download.intel.com/design/network/manuals/8254x_GBe_SDM.pdf.
Interrupt mitigation boosts performance when the guest suffers from
an high interrupt rate (i.e. receiving short UDP packets at high packet
rate). For some numerical results see the following link
http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/papers/20130520-rizzo-vm.pdf
Signed-off-by: Vincenzo Maffione <v.maffione@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Andreas Färber <afaerber@suse.de> (for pc-* machines)
Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
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