Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU ARM SMP: IPI delivery delayed until next main loop event // how to improve IPI latency?

[Alex Züpke]

Am 15.06.2015 um 17:04 schrieb Peter Maydell:
> On 12 June 2015 at 17:38, Alex Züpke <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm benchmarking some IPI (== inter-processor-interrupt) synchronization 
>> stuff of my custom kernel on QEMU ARM (qemu-system-arm -M vexpress-a15 -smp 
>> 2) and ran into the following problem: pending IPIs are delayed until the 
>> QEMU main loop receives an event (for example the timer interrupt expires or 
>> I press a key on the console).
>>
>> The following timing diagram tries to show this:
>>
>>   CPU #0                       CPU #1
>>   ======                       ======
>>   ... other stuff ...          WFI (wait for interrupt, like x86 "HLT")
>>   send SGI in MPCore
>>   polls for completeness
>>                  <time passes ...>
>>   polls ...
>>                  <... and passes ...>
>>   still polls ...
>>                  <... and passes ...>
>>   still polls ...
>>                  <... and passes ...>
>>
>>
>>                  <timer interrupt expires>
>>                  <now QEMU switches to CPU #1>
>>                                receives IPI
>>                                signals completeness
>>                                WFI
>>                  <QEMU switches to CPU #0>
>>   polling done
>>   process timer interrupt
>>   ...
> 
> Does your polling loop have a YIELD insn in it? We (and hardware)
> can use that as a hint that you're busy-looping and we should
> try doing something else. (QEMU doesn't implement that for A32/T32
> yet, but we should; we already do on A64.)

Yes, I should be yielding here, but SEV isn't implemented.
Probably the notification should be done there as well.


Best regards
Alex