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-KVM/ARM VGIC Forwarded Physical Interrupts
-==========================================
-
-The KVM/ARM code implements software support for the ARM Generic
-Interrupt Controller's (GIC's) hardware support for virtualization by
-allowing software to inject virtual interrupts to a VM, which the guest
-OS sees as regular interrupts. The code is famously known as the VGIC.
-
-Some of these virtual interrupts, however, correspond to physical
-interrupts from real physical devices. One example could be the
-architected timer, which itself supports virtualization, and therefore
-lets a guest OS program the hardware device directly to raise an
-interrupt at some point in time. When such an interrupt is raised, the
-host OS initially handles the interrupt and must somehow signal this
-event as a virtual interrupt to the guest. Another example could be a
-passthrough device, where the physical interrupts are initially handled
-by the host, but the device driver for the device lives in the guest OS
-and KVM must therefore somehow inject a virtual interrupt on behalf of
-the physical one to the guest OS.
-
-These virtual interrupts corresponding to a physical interrupt on the
-host are called forwarded physical interrupts, but are also sometimes
-referred to as 'virtualized physical interrupts' and 'mapped interrupts'.
-
-Forwarded physical interrupts are handled slightly differently compared
-to virtual interrupts generated purely by a software emulated device.
-
-
-The HW bit
-----------
-Virtual interrupts are signalled to the guest by programming the List
-Registers (LRs) on the GIC before running a VCPU. The LR is programmed
-with the virtual IRQ number and the state of the interrupt (Pending,
-Active, or Pending+Active). When the guest ACKs and EOIs a virtual
-interrupt, the LR state moves from Pending to Active, and finally to
-inactive.
-
-The LRs include an extra bit, called the HW bit. When this bit is set,
-KVM must also program an additional field in the LR, the physical IRQ
-number, to link the virtual with the physical IRQ.
-
-When the HW bit is set, KVM must EITHER set the Pending OR the Active
-bit, never both at the same time.
-
-Setting the HW bit causes the hardware to deactivate the physical
-interrupt on the physical distributor when the guest deactivates the
-corresponding virtual interrupt.
-
-
-Forwarded Physical Interrupts Life Cycle
-----------------------------------------
-
-The state of forwarded physical interrupts is managed in the following way:
-
- - The physical interrupt is acked by the host, and becomes active on
- the physical distributor (*).
- - KVM sets the LR.Pending bit, because this is the only way the GICV
- interface is going to present it to the guest.
- - LR.Pending will stay set as long as the guest has not acked the interrupt.
- - LR.Pending transitions to LR.Active on the guest read of the IAR, as
- expected.
- - On guest EOI, the *physical distributor* active bit gets cleared,
- but the LR.Active is left untouched (set).
- - KVM clears the LR on VM exits when the physical distributor
- active state has been cleared.
-
-(*): The host handling is slightly more complicated. For some forwarded
-interrupts (shared), KVM directly sets the active state on the physical
-distributor before entering the guest, because the interrupt is never actually
-handled on the host (see details on the timer as an example below). For other
-forwarded interrupts (non-shared) the host does not deactivate the interrupt
-when the host ISR completes, but leaves the interrupt active until the guest
-deactivates it. Leaving the interrupt active is allowed, because Linux
-configures the physical GIC with EOIMode=1, which causes EOI operations to
-perform a priority drop allowing the GIC to receive other interrupts of the
-default priority.
-
-
-Forwarded Edge and Level Triggered PPIs and SPIs
-------------------------------------------------
-Forwarded physical interrupts injected should always be active on the
-physical distributor when injected to a guest.
-
-Level-triggered interrupts will keep the interrupt line to the GIC
-asserted, typically until the guest programs the device to deassert the
-line. This means that the interrupt will remain pending on the physical
-distributor until the guest has reprogrammed the device. Since we
-always run the VM with interrupts enabled on the CPU, a pending
-interrupt will exit the guest as soon as we switch into the guest,
-preventing the guest from ever making progress as the process repeats
-over and over. Therefore, the active state on the physical distributor
-must be set when entering the guest, preventing the GIC from forwarding
-the pending interrupt to the CPU. As soon as the guest deactivates the
-interrupt, the physical line is sampled by the hardware again and the host
-takes a new interrupt if and only if the physical line is still asserted.
-
-Edge-triggered interrupts do not exhibit the same problem with
-preventing guest execution that level-triggered interrupts do. One
-option is to not use HW bit at all, and inject edge-triggered interrupts
-from a physical device as pure virtual interrupts. But that would
-potentially slow down handling of the interrupt in the guest, because a
-physical interrupt occurring in the middle of the guest ISR would
-preempt the guest for the host to handle the interrupt. Additionally,
-if you configure the system to handle interrupts on a separate physical
-core from that running your VCPU, you still have to interrupt the VCPU
-to queue the pending state onto the LR, even though the guest won't use
-this information until the guest ISR completes. Therefore, the HW
-bit should always be set for forwarded edge-triggered interrupts. With
-the HW bit set, the virtual interrupt is injected and additional
-physical interrupts occurring before the guest deactivates the interrupt
-simply mark the state on the physical distributor as Pending+Active. As
-soon as the guest deactivates the interrupt, the host takes another
-interrupt if and only if there was a physical interrupt between injecting
-the forwarded interrupt to the guest and the guest deactivating the
-interrupt.
-
-Consequently, whenever we schedule a VCPU with one or more LRs with the
-HW bit set, the interrupt must also be active on the physical
-distributor.
-
-
-Forwarded LPIs
---------------
-LPIs, introduced in GICv3, are always edge-triggered and do not have an
-active state. They become pending when a device signal them, and as
-soon as they are acked by the CPU, they are inactive again.
-
-It therefore doesn't make sense, and is not supported, to set the HW bit
-for physical LPIs that are forwarded to a VM as virtual interrupts,
-typically virtual SPIs.
-
-For LPIs, there is no other choice than to preempt the VCPU thread if
-necessary, and queue the pending state onto the LR.
-
-
-Putting It Together: The Architected Timer
-------------------------------------------
-The architected timer is a device that signals interrupts with level
-triggered semantics. The timer hardware is directly accessed by VCPUs
-which program the timer to fire at some point in time. Each VCPU on a
-system programs the timer to fire at different times, and therefore the
-hardware is multiplexed between multiple VCPUs. This is implemented by
-context-switching the timer state along with each VCPU thread.
-
-However, this means that a scenario like the following is entirely
-possible, and in fact, typical:
-
-1. KVM runs the VCPU
-2. The guest programs the time to fire in T+100
-3. The guest is idle and calls WFI (wait-for-interrupts)
-4. The hardware traps to the host
-5. KVM stores the timer state to memory and disables the hardware timer
-6. KVM schedules a soft timer to fire in T+(100 - time since step 2)
-7. KVM puts the VCPU thread to sleep (on a waitqueue)
-8. The soft timer fires, waking up the VCPU thread
-9. KVM reprograms the timer hardware with the VCPU's values
-10. KVM marks the timer interrupt as active on the physical distributor
-11. KVM injects a forwarded physical interrupt to the guest
-12. KVM runs the VCPU
-
-Notice that KVM injects a forwarded physical interrupt in step 11 without
-the corresponding interrupt having actually fired on the host. That is
-exactly why we mark the timer interrupt as active in step 10, because
-the active state on the physical distributor is part of the state
-belonging to the timer hardware, which is context-switched along with
-the VCPU thread.
-
-If the guest does not idle because it is busy, the flow looks like this
-instead:
-
-1. KVM runs the VCPU
-2. The guest programs the time to fire in T+100
-4. At T+100 the timer fires and a physical IRQ causes the VM to exit
- (note that this initially only traps to EL2 and does not run the host ISR
- until KVM has returned to the host).
-5. With interrupts still disabled on the CPU coming back from the guest, KVM
- stores the virtual timer state to memory and disables the virtual hw timer.
-6. KVM looks at the timer state (in memory) and injects a forwarded physical
- interrupt because it concludes the timer has expired.
-7. KVM marks the timer interrupt as active on the physical distributor
-7. KVM enables the timer, enables interrupts, and runs the VCPU
-
-Notice that again the forwarded physical interrupt is injected to the
-guest without having actually been handled on the host. In this case it
-is because the physical interrupt is never actually seen by the host because the
-timer is disabled upon guest return, and the virtual forwarded interrupt is
-injected on the KVM guest entry path.