tjh.dev
KVM: x86: Emulate IA32_TSC_ADJUST MSR
CPUID.7.0.EBX[1]=1 indicates IA32_TSC_ADJUST MSR 0x3b is supported
Basic design is to emulate the MSR by allowing reads and writes to a guest
vcpu specific location to store the value of the emulated MSR while adding
the value to the vmcs tsc_offset. In this way the IA32_TSC_ADJUST value will
be included in all reads to the TSC MSR whether through rdmsr or rdtsc. This
is of course as long as the "use TSC counter offsetting" VM-execution control
is enabled as well as the IA32_TSC_ADJUST control.
However, because hardware will only return the TSC + IA32_TSC_ADJUST +
vmsc tsc_offset for a guest process when it does and rdtsc (with the correct
settings) the value of our virtualized IA32_TSC_ADJUST must be stored in one
of these three locations. The argument against storing it in the actual MSR
is performance. This is likely to be seldom used while the save/restore is
required on every transition. IA32_TSC_ADJUST was created as a way to solve
some issues with writing TSC itself so that is not an option either.
The remaining option, defined above as our solution has the problem of
returning incorrect vmcs tsc_offset values (unless we intercept and fix, not
done here) as mentioned above. However, more problematic is that storing the
data in vmcs tsc_offset will have a different semantic effect on the system
than does using the actual MSR. This is illustrated in the following example:
The hypervisor set the IA32_TSC_ADJUST, then the guest sets it and a guest
process performs a rdtsc. In this case the guest process will get
TSC + IA32_TSC_ADJUST_hyperviser + vmsc tsc_offset including
IA32_TSC_ADJUST_guest. While the total system semantics changed the semantics
as seen by the guest do not and hence this will not cause a problem.
Signed-off-by: Will Auld <will.auld@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com>
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