• Paolo Bonzini's avatar
    KVM: x86: Allow the guest to run with dirty debug registers · c77fb5fe
    Paolo Bonzini authored
    When not running in guest-debug mode, the guest controls the debug
    registers and having to take an exit for each DR access is a waste
    of time.  If the guest gets into a state where each context switch
    causes DR to be saved and restored, this can take away as much as 40%
    of the execution time from the guest.
    
    After this patch, VMX- and SVM-specific code can set a flag in
    switch_db_regs, telling vcpu_enter_guest that on the next exit the debug
    registers might be dirty and need to be reloaded (syncing will be taken
    care of by a new callback in kvm_x86_ops).  This flag can be set on the
    first access to a debug registers, so that multiple accesses to the
    debug registers only cause one vmexit.
    
    Note that since the guest will be able to read debug registers and
    enable breakpoints in DR7, we need to ensure that they are synchronized
    on entry to the guest---including DR6 that was not synced before.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarPaolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
    c77fb5fe
x86.c 189 KB