linux/include/trace/events
Paolo Bonzini f781951299 kvm: add halt_poll_ns module parameter
This patch introduces a new module parameter for the KVM module; when it
is present, KVM attempts a bit of polling on every HLT before scheduling
itself out via kvm_vcpu_block.

This parameter helps a lot for latency-bound workloads---in particular
I tested it with O_DSYNC writes with a battery-backed disk in the host.
In this case, writes are fast (because the data doesn't have to go all
the way to the platters) but they cannot be merged by either the host or
the guest.  KVM's performance here is usually around 30% of bare metal,
or 50% if you use cache=directsync or cache=writethrough (these
parameters avoid that the guest sends pointless flush requests, and
at the same time they are not slow because of the battery-backed cache).
The bad performance happens because on every halt the host CPU decides
to halt itself too.  When the interrupt comes, the vCPU thread is then
migrated to a new physical CPU, and in general the latency is horrible
because the vCPU thread has to be scheduled back in.

With this patch performance reaches 60-65% of bare metal and, more
important, 99% of what you get if you use idle=poll in the guest.  This
means that the tunable gets rid of this particular bottleneck, and more
work can be done to improve performance in the kernel or QEMU.

Of course there is some price to pay; every time an otherwise idle vCPUs
is interrupted by an interrupt, it will poll unnecessarily and thus
impose a little load on the host.  The above results were obtained with
a mostly random value of the parameter (500000), and the load was around
1.5-2.5% CPU usage on one of the host's core for each idle guest vCPU.

The patch also adds a new stat, /sys/kernel/debug/kvm/halt_successful_poll,
that can be used to tune the parameter.  It counts how many HLT
instructions received an interrupt during the polling period; each
successful poll avoids that Linux schedules the VCPU thread out and back
in, and may also avoid a likely trip to C1 and back for the physical CPU.

While the VM is idle, a Linux 4 VCPU VM halts around 10 times per second.
Of these halts, almost all are failed polls.  During the benchmark,
instead, basically all halts end within the polling period, except a more
or less constant stream of 50 per second coming from vCPUs that are not
running the benchmark.  The wasted time is thus very low.  Things may
be slightly different for Windows VMs, which have a ~10 ms timer tick.

The effect is also visible on Marcelo's recently-introduced latency
test for the TSC deadline timer.  Though of course a non-RT kernel has
awful latency bounds, the latency of the timer is around 8000-10000 clock
cycles compared to 20000-120000 without setting halt_poll_ns.  For the TSC
deadline timer, thus, the effect is both a smaller average latency and
a smaller variance.

Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
2015-02-06 13:08:37 +01:00
..
9p.h 9p: trace: use %*ph to dump buffer 2013-05-28 13:42:08 -05:00
asoc.h ASoC: Remove snd_soc_cache_sync() implementation 2014-11-09 09:06:30 +00:00
bcache.h bcache: fix crash in bcache_btree_node_alloc_fail tracepoint 2014-08-04 15:23:03 -07:00
block.h blktrace: fix accounting of partially completed requests 2014-03-05 16:11:21 -07:00
btrfs.h Btrfs: fix wrong parse of extent map's tracepoint 2014-09-18 07:14:47 -07:00
compaction.h mm/compaction: do not count migratepages when unnecessary 2014-06-04 16:54:07 -07:00
context_tracking.h context_tracking: User/kernel broundary cross trace events 2013-08-14 17:14:48 +02:00
ext3.h jbd: change journal_invalidatepage() to accept length 2013-05-21 23:26:36 -04:00
ext4.h ext4: change LRU to round-robin in extent status tree shrinker 2014-11-25 11:45:37 -05:00
f2fs.h f2fs: introduce FITRIM in f2fs_ioctl 2014-09-30 15:06:09 -07:00
fence.h fence: dma-buf cross-device synchronization (v18) 2014-07-08 12:18:56 -07:00
filelock.h locks: generic_delete_lease doesn't need a file_lock at all 2014-10-07 14:06:12 -04:00
filemap.h mm: trace filemap add and del 2013-04-29 15:54:28 -07:00
gfpflags.h mm: get rid of __GFP_KMEMCG 2014-06-04 16:53:56 -07:00
gpio.h
host1x.h gpu: host1x: Use struct host1x_bo pointers in traces 2014-11-13 16:11:32 +01:00
hswadsp.h Merge remote-tracking branches 'asoc/topic/ml26124', 'asoc/topic/of', 'asoc/topic/omap', 'asoc/topic/pxa' and 'asoc/topic/rcar' into asoc-next 2014-03-12 23:04:35 +00:00
i2c.h i2c: Add message transfer tracepoints for SMBUS [ver #2] 2014-03-13 22:15:07 +01:00
intel-sst.h Merge remote-tracking branches 'asoc/topic/ml26124', 'asoc/topic/of', 'asoc/topic/omap', 'asoc/topic/pxa' and 'asoc/topic/rcar' into asoc-next 2014-03-12 23:04:35 +00:00
iommu.h iommu: Add iommu_error class event to iommu trace 2013-09-25 11:07:04 +02:00
ipi.h tracepoint: add generic tracepoint definitions for IPI tracing 2014-08-07 20:40:40 -04:00
irq.h net: treewide: Fix typo found in DocBook/networking.xml 2014-09-05 17:35:28 -07:00
jbd2.h jbd2: trace when lock_buffer in do_get_write_access takes a long time 2013-04-21 16:47:54 -04:00
jbd.h
kmem.h mm: get rid of unnecessary overhead of trace_mm_page_alloc_extfrag() 2013-11-13 12:09:10 +09:00
kvm.h kvm: add halt_poll_ns module parameter 2015-02-06 13:08:37 +01:00
lock.h
mce.h
migrate.h mm tracing: tell mm_migrate_pages event about numa_misplaced 2014-08-06 18:01:18 -07:00
module.h module: Replace module_ref with atomic_t refcnt 2014-11-11 17:07:46 +10:30
napi.h
net.h net: Rename skb->rxhash to skb->hash 2014-03-26 15:58:20 -04:00
nmi.h x86: Add NMI duration tracepoints 2013-06-23 11:52:58 +02:00
oom.h mm, oom: change type of oom_score_adj to short 2012-12-11 17:22:27 -08:00
pagemap.h mm: pagemap: avoid unnecessary overhead when tracepoints are deactivated 2014-08-06 18:01:20 -07:00
power_cpu_migrate.h ARM: bL_switcher/trace: Add trace trigger for trace bootstrapping 2013-09-23 18:47:30 -04:00
power.h PM / sleep: trace events for device PM callbacks 2014-06-11 02:16:48 +02:00
printk.h printk/tracing: rework console tracing 2013-04-29 18:28:13 -07:00
random.h random: convert DEBUG_ENT to tracepoints 2013-10-10 14:32:23 -04:00
rcu.h rcu: Remove redundant TREE_PREEMPT_RCU config option 2014-10-29 10:20:05 -07:00
regmap.h regmap: Add support for discarding parts of the register cache 2013-05-12 18:46:47 +04:00
regulator.h
rpm.h
sched.h sched: Fix the PREEMPT_ACTIVE check in __trace_sched_switch_state() 2014-10-28 10:47:53 +01:00
scsi.h scsi: rename SERVICE_ACTION_IN to SERVICE_ACTION_IN_16 2014-11-24 20:01:40 +01:00
signal.h
skb.h
sock.h
spi.h spi: Provide common spi_message processing loop 2013-10-11 20:09:50 +01:00
sunrpc.h sunrpc: add some tracepoints around enqueue and dequeue of svc_xprt 2014-12-09 11:29:14 -05:00
swiotlb.h tracing/events: Add bounce tracing to swiotbl 2013-10-02 12:53:26 -04:00
syscalls.h tracepoint: Fix sparse warnings in tracepoint.c 2014-04-09 10:12:11 -04:00
target.h Merge remote-tracking branch 'scsi-queue/drivers-for-3.19' into for-linus 2014-12-18 05:56:29 -08:00
task.h exec: kill bprm->tcomm[], simplify the "basename" logic 2014-04-07 16:36:05 -07:00
thermal.h thermal: trace: Trace when temperature is above a trip point 2014-07-29 09:28:43 -04:00
thp.h powerpc/thp: Add tracepoints to track hugepage invalidate 2014-08-13 18:20:42 +10:00
timer.h Merge branch 'timers-nohz-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2013-05-05 13:23:27 -07:00
tlb.h x86/mm: Add tracepoints for TLB flushes 2014-07-31 08:48:51 -07:00
udp.h
v4l2.h [media] v4l: add stream format for SDR receiver 2014-03-05 14:15:12 -03:00
vmscan.h mm: shrinker: add nid to tracepoint output 2014-06-04 16:54:04 -07:00
workqueue.h workqueue: rename cpu_workqueue to pool_workqueue 2013-02-13 19:29:12 -08:00
writeback.h Most of the changes were largely clean ups, and some documentation. 2014-04-03 10:26:31 -07:00
xen.h xen/mmu: Use Xen specific TLB flush instead of the generic one. 2012-10-31 12:38:31 -04:00