Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC v2 03/11] docs: new design document multi-thread-tcg.txt (DRAFTING)

[Sergey Fedorov]

On 11/04/16 23:00, Sergey Fedorov wrote:
> On 05/04/16 18:32, Alex Bennée wrote:
>
> (snip)
>> +
>> +Memory maps and TLBs
>> +--------------------
>> +
>> +The memory handling code is fairly critical to the speed of memory
>> +access in the emulated system.
>> +
> It would be nice to put some intro sentence for the following bullets :)
>
>> +  - Memory regions (dividing up access to PIO, MMIO and RAM)
>> +  - Dirty page tracking (for code gen, migration and display)
>> +  - Virtual TLB (for translating guest address->real address)

There's also a global page table - called 'l1_map' - which is used for:
 * keeping a list of TBs generated from a given physical guest page for
   further code invalidation on page writes
 * holding a bitmap to track which regions of a given physical guest page
   actually contain code for optimized code invalidation on page writes
   (used only in system mode emulation)
 * holding page flags, e.g. protection bits (used only in user mode
   emulation)

The page table seems to be protected by 'mmap_lock' in user mode
emulation but by 'tb_lock' in system mode emulation. It may turn to be
possible to read it safely even with no lock held.

Kind regards,
Sergey

>> +
>> +There is a both a fast path walked by the generated code and a slow
>> +path when resolution is required. When the TLB tables are updated we
>> +need to ensure they are done in a safe way by bringing all executing
>> +threads to a halt before making the modifications.
> Again, I think we could benefit if we could possibly manage to avoid
> bringing vCPU threads to halt.
>
> Nothing about memory regions and dirty page tracking?
>
>> +
>> +DESIGN REQUIREMENTS:
>> +
>> +  - TLB Flush All/Page
>> +    - can be across-CPUs
>> +    - will need all other CPUs brought to a halt
> s/will/may/ ?
>
>> +  - TLB Update (update a CPUTLBEntry, via tlb_set_page_with_attrs)
>> +    - This is a per-CPU table - by definition can't race
>> +    - updated by it's own thread when the slow-path is forced
> (snip)

Kind regards,
Sergey