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From: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Newsgroups: linux.kernel
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/1] KVM: don't allow irq_fpu_usable when the VCPU's XCR0  is loaded
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 14:20:01 +0100
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On 11/03/2016 22:33, David Matlack wrote:
> > Is this better than just always keeping the host's XCR0 loaded outside
> > if the KVM interrupts-disabled region?
> 
> Probably not. AFAICT KVM does not rely on it being loaded outside that
> region. xsetbv isn't insanely expensive, is it? Maybe to minimize the
> time spent with interrupts disabled it was put outside.
> 
> I do like that your solution would be contained to KVM.

I agree with Andy.  We do want a fix for recent kernels because of the
!eager_fpu case that Guangrong mentioned.

Paolo

ps: while Andy is planning to kill lazy FPU, I want to benchmark it with
KVM...  Remember that with a single pre-xsave host in your cluster, your
virt management might happily default your VMs to a Westmere or Nehalem
CPU model.  GCC might be a pretty good testbench for this (e.g. a kernel
compile with very high make -j), because outside of the lexer (which
plays SIMD games) it never uses the FPU.