[PATCH v3 01/19] KVM: arm/arm64: Add vITS save/restore API documentation

[Auger Eric]

Hi Peter,

On 13/03/2017 18:38, Peter Maydell wrote:
> On 13 March 2017 at 15:42, Auger Eric <eric.auger at redhat.com> wrote:
>> On 13/03/2017 14:08, Peter Maydell wrote:
>>> These CTE/ITE/DTE formats don't seem to have any kind of
>>> "escape hatch" for allowing backwards compatible extensions
>>> to the format. Do we need one? (I think that's particularly
>>> likely to be useful where there's an ITS feature we don't
>>> currently implement but might perhaps want to in future,
>>> like GICv4 virtual interrupt injection.)
>>
>> Maybe we could rely on the ITS registers (that must be restored before
>> the tables) to get any info about the format used to encode the table
>> entries. We have GITS_CTLR[1] that can help discriminate between GICv3/
>> GICv4. GITS_BASER.Entry_size can be 8B for current implementation and
>> 16B for an enhanced implementation. CTE[52:62] can be used to encode a
>> format version.
> 
> Using the registers seems like a good idea, though I
> don't know about the specific fields. The most obvious
> place to keep something like this would be GITS_IIDR.Revision
> I suppose. Using the "size of the table entry" fields would
> work too.
> 
> If we have to make all these tables double the size if
> we move to 16b/entry in future, is that a significant
> increase in memory used, or a don't-really-care increase?
Sorry for the delay, I tried to have a better understanding of the GICv4
new features before answering.

I don't think the device table nor the collection table are impacted by
GICv4. To me only the ITT is impacted and ITE would certainly become
2*8Bytes since there are new fields to encode (vPE, doorbell INTID). We
would also need to save/restore the vPE table.

ITT size for 1 device is nb_supported_eventids_for_the_device * 8 or 16
Bytes

I would tempt to think this falls under the category of don't-really-care.
> 
> I guess what we should do is:
>  * identify obviously imminently upcoming features (like
>    GICv4 support, wider physaddrs) and make sure the format
>    supports them
>    [let's say, anything we think we're definitely likely
>    to be adding in the next 12 months]
- support of GICv4 on guest side. I guess this relates to nested
virtualization use case.
- extension of phys addrs, Marc? is there any requirement/plan?
>  * decide on our 'escape hatch' plan for anything
>    more vague
OK I will formalize this. My understanding is if we need to update the
ITE format, we will directly encode all the fields and update the ITE
size to a 2x 8B entry. This change is easily recognizable through
GITS_TYPER register.
>  * test that we do correctly fail migration for an
>    incoming ITS state that asks for an unsupported Revision
OK I will do that
>  * document how the 'escape hatch' is intended to work
>    so we don't then invent a different approach in the
>    future :-)
OK

Thanks

Eric
> 
> thanks
> -- PMM
>