KVM: x86: support using the vmx preemption timer for tsc deadline timer

The VMX preemption timer can be used to virtualize the TSC deadline timer.
The VMX preemption timer is armed when the vCPU is running, and a VMExit
will happen if the virtual TSC deadline timer expires.

When the vCPU thread is blocked because of HLT, KVM will switch to use
an hrtimer, and then go back to the VMX preemption timer when the vCPU
thread is unblocked.

This solution avoids the complex OS's hrtimer system, and the host
timer interrupt handling cost, replacing them with a little math
(for guest->host TSC and host TSC->preemption timer conversion)
and a cheaper VMexit.  This benefits latency for isolated pCPUs.

[A word about performance... Yunhong reported a 30% reduction in average
 latency from cyclictest.  I made a similar test with tscdeadline_latency
 from kvm-unit-tests, and measured

 - ~20 clock cycles loss (out of ~3200, so less than 1% but still
   statistically significant) in the worst case where the test halts
   just after programming the TSC deadline timer

 - ~800 clock cycles gain (25% reduction in latency) in the best case
   where the test busy waits.

 I removed the VMX bits from Yunhong's patch, to concentrate them in the
 next patch - Paolo]

Signed-off-by: Yunhong Jiang <yunhong.jiang@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
index ab2f45a50bb5..1f4b2926a5a3 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
@@ -2740,6 +2740,11 @@ void kvm_arch_vcpu_load(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, int cpu)
 				rdtsc() - vcpu->arch.last_host_tsc;
 		if (tsc_delta < 0)
 			mark_tsc_unstable("KVM discovered backwards TSC");
+
+		if (kvm_lapic_hv_timer_in_use(vcpu) &&
+				kvm_x86_ops->set_hv_timer(vcpu,
+					kvm_get_lapic_tscdeadline_msr(vcpu)))
+			kvm_lapic_switch_to_sw_timer(vcpu);
 		if (check_tsc_unstable()) {
 			u64 offset = kvm_compute_tsc_offset(vcpu,
 						vcpu->arch.last_guest_tsc);