Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-25 Thread Marcelo Tosatti
On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 01:01:38PM -1000, Zachary Amsden wrote: With this patchset, KVM now has a much stronger guarantee: If you have old guest software running on broken hardware, using SMP virtual machines, you do not get hardware performance and error-free time virtualization.However,

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-25 Thread Zachary Amsden
On 08/25/2010 06:55 AM, Marcelo Tosatti wrote: On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 01:01:38PM -1000, Zachary Amsden wrote: With this patchset, KVM now has a much stronger guarantee: If you have old guest software running on broken hardware, using SMP virtual machines, you do not get hardware

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-24 Thread David S. Ahern
On 08/23/10 23:47, Zachary Amsden wrote: I've heard the rumor that TSC is orders of magnitude faster under VMware than under KVM from three people now, and I thought you were part of that camp. Needless to say, they are either laughably incorrect, or possess some great secret knowledge of

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-24 Thread Zachary Amsden
On 08/24/2010 03:32 AM, David S. Ahern wrote: On 08/23/10 23:47, Zachary Amsden wrote: I've heard the rumor that TSC is orders of magnitude faster under VMware than under KVM from three people now, and I thought you were part of that camp. Needless to say, they are either laughably

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-24 Thread Marcelo Tosatti
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 10:07:14PM -1000, Zachary Amsden wrote: This patch set implements full TSC virtualization, with both trapping and passthrough modes, and intelligent mode switching. As a result, TSC will never go backwards, we are stable against guest re-calibration attempts, VM reset,

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-24 Thread Zachary Amsden
On 08/24/2010 12:13 PM, Marcelo Tosatti wrote: On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 10:07:14PM -1000, Zachary Amsden wrote: This patch set implements full TSC virtualization, with both trapping and passthrough modes, and intelligent mode switching. As a result, TSC will never go backwards, we are stable

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-23 Thread Zachary Amsden
On 08/21/2010 03:32 PM, David S. Ahern wrote: On 08/20/10 17:24, Zachary Amsden wrote: On 08/20/2010 03:26 AM, David S. Ahern wrote: On 08/20/10 02:07, Zachary Amsden wrote: This patch set implements full TSC virtualization, with both trapping and passthrough modes, and

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-23 Thread David S. Ahern
On 08/23/10 19:44, Zachary Amsden wrote: I have also looked at time keeping and performance of getimeofday on a certain proprietary hypervisor. KVM lags severely here and workloads dependent on timestamps are dramatically impacted. Evaluations and decisions are made today based on current

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-23 Thread Zachary Amsden
On 08/23/2010 05:04 PM, David S. Ahern wrote: On 08/23/10 19:44, Zachary Amsden wrote: I have also looked at time keeping and performance of getimeofday on a certain proprietary hypervisor. KVM lags severely here and workloads dependent on timestamps are dramatically impacted. Evaluations

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-21 Thread David S. Ahern
On 08/20/10 17:24, Zachary Amsden wrote: On 08/20/2010 03:26 AM, David S. Ahern wrote: On 08/20/10 02:07, Zachary Amsden wrote: This patch set implements full TSC virtualization, with both trapping and passthrough modes, and intelligent mode switching. As a result, TSC will never go

KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-20 Thread Zachary Amsden
This patch set implements full TSC virtualization, with both trapping and passthrough modes, and intelligent mode switching. As a result, TSC will never go backwards, we are stable against guest re-calibration attempts, VM reset, and migration. For guests which require it, the TSC khz can even be

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-20 Thread David S. Ahern
On 08/20/10 02:07, Zachary Amsden wrote: This patch set implements full TSC virtualization, with both trapping and passthrough modes, and intelligent mode switching. As a result, TSC will never go backwards, we are stable against guest re-calibration attempts, VM reset, and migration. For

Re: KVM timekeeping and TSC virtualization

2010-08-20 Thread Zachary Amsden
On 08/20/2010 03:26 AM, David S. Ahern wrote: On 08/20/10 02:07, Zachary Amsden wrote: This patch set implements full TSC virtualization, with both trapping and passthrough modes, and intelligent mode switching. As a result, TSC will never go backwards, we are stable against guest