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    icount: process QEMU_CLOCK_VIRTUAL timers in vCPU thread · 6b8f0187
    Paolo Bonzini 提交于
    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: NPaolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
    6b8f0187
qemu-timer.c 17.7 KB