When running a virtual core of a guest that is configured with fewer
threads per core than the physical cores have, the extra physical
threads are currently unused. This makes it possible to use them to
run one or more other virtual cores from the same guest when certain
conditions are met. This applies on POWER7, and on POWER8 to guests
with one thread per virtual core. (It doesn't apply to POWER8 guests
with multiple threads per vcore because they require a 1-1 virtual to
physical thread mapping in order to be able to use msgsndp and the
TIR.)
The idea is that we maintain a list of preempted vcores for each
physical cpu (i.e. each core, since the host runs single-threaded).
Then, when a vcore is about to run, it checks to see if there are
any vcores on the list for its physical cpu that could be
piggybacked onto this vcore's execution. If so, those additional
vcores are put into state VCORE_PIGGYBACK and their runnable VCPU
threads are started as well as the original vcore, which is called
the master vcore.
After the vcores have exited the guest, the extra ones are put back
onto the preempted list if any of their VCPUs are still runnable and
not idle.
This means that vcpu->arch.ptid is no longer necessarily the same as
the physical thread that the vcpu runs on. In order to make it easier
for code that wants to send an IPI to know which CPU to target, we
now store that in a new field in struct vcpu_arch, called thread_cpu.
Reviewed-by: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
Tested-by: Laurent Vivier <lvivier@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Signed-off-by: Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de>
ec25716508