New NHM processors will support Pause-Loop Exiting by adding 2 VM-execution
control fields:
PLE_Gap - upper bound on the amount of time between two successive
executions of PAUSE in a loop.
PLE_Window - upper bound on the amount of time a guest is allowed to execute in
a PAUSE loop
If the time, between this execution of PAUSE and previous one, exceeds the
PLE_Gap, processor consider this PAUSE belongs to a new loop.
Otherwise, processor determins the the total execution time of this loop(since
1st PAUSE in this loop), and triggers a VM exit if total time exceeds the
PLE_Window.
* Refer SDM volume 3b section 21.6.13 & 22.1.3.
Pause-Loop Exiting can be used to detect Lock-Holder Preemption, where one VP
is sched-out after hold a spinlock, then other VPs for same lock are sched-in
to waste the CPU time.
Our tests indicate that most spinlocks are held for less than 212 cycles.
Performance tests show that with 2X LP over-commitment we can get +2% perf
improvement for kernel build(Even more perf gain with more LPs).
Signed-off-by: Zhai Edwin <edwin.zhai@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com>
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