Re: [PATCH v2] x86/kvm: introduce pv idle time
He Rongguang <[email protected]> Wed, 5 Aug 2026 10:31:00 +0800
| Newsgroups | org.kernel.vger.kvm,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
在 2026/7/21 11:00, He Rongguang 写道: > Hi, this patch introduces a PV mechanism for guests to publish their > vCPU idle state and accumulated idle time to the host. This allows > the host to efficiently determine whether a vCPU is currently in its > idle loop, and knows vCPU idled for how long. QEMU patch and ARM64 > support patch will follow in a subsequent series. > > The guest writes a GPA pointing to a struct kvm_idle_time via > MSR_KVM_PV_IDLE_TIME. When entering idle, the guest sets the flag field > to KVM_PV_VCPU_IDLE. On idle exit, it clears the flag back to > KVM_PV_VCPU_RUNNING and adds the elapsed idle duration to idle_accum > (in nanoseconds). > > The host can read the flag at any time through > kvm_arch_is_vcpu_pv_idle() to make better scheduling or resource > allocation decisions. For example, host may overcommit those vCPUs > which are mostly idle. An in-guest agent may be absent, or may not > report the status in time. > > The accumulated idle time provides visibility into per-vCPU usage for > monitoring purposes. An in-guest agent can report VM CPU usage, but > this PV mechanism allows the host to obtain guest CPU usage even when > no agent is installed. This is especially helpful when the hypervisor > enables exitless-hlt/mwait (for better guest performance) or when the > guest uses idle halt-polling, both of which make QEMU vCPU thread usage > deviate from the actual in-guest vCPU usage. > > This feature is advertised via KVM_FEATURE_PV_IDLE_TIME in CPUID leaf > 0x40000001. Guests enable it by writing the appropriate MSR during > initialization, similar to the existing steal time mechanism. Ping, any feedback on this patch would be appreciated.