AMD Ryzen KVM/NPT/IOMMU issue

[geoff at hostfission.com]

I have isolated it to a single change, although I do not completely
understand what other implications it might have.

By just changing the line in `init_vmcb` that reads:

   save->g_pat = svm->vcpu.arch.pat;

To:

   save->g_pat = 0x0606060606060606;

This enables write back and performance jumps through the roof.

This needs someone with more experience to write a proper patch that
addresses this in a smarter way rather then just hard coding the value.

This patch looks like an attempt to fix this issue but it yields no
detectable performance gains.

https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/6748441/

Any takers?

On 2017-10-25 06:08, geoff at hostfission.com wrote:
> I have identified the issue! With NPT enabled I am now getting near 
> bare
> metal performance with PCI pass through. The issue was with some stubs
> that have not been properly implemented. I will clean my code up and
> submit a patch shortly.
> 
> This is a 10 year old bug that has only become evident with the recent
> ability to perform PCI pass-through with dedicated graphics cards. I
> would expect this to improve performance across most workloads that use
> AMD NPT.
> 
> Here are some benchmarks to show what I am getting in my dev 
> environment:
> 
> https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/22878932
> https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/22879024
> 
> -Geoff
> 
> 
> On 2017-10-24 16:15, geoff at hostfission.com wrote:
>> Further to this I have verified that IOMMU is working fine, traces and
>> additional printk's added to the kernel module were used to check. All
>> accesses are successful and hit the correct addresses.
>> 
>> However profiling under Windows shows there might be an issue with 
>> IRQs
>> not reaching the guest. When FluidMark is running at 5fps I still see
>> excellent system responsiveness with the CPU 90% idle and the GPU load
>> at 6%.
>> 
>> When switching PhysX to CPU mode the GPU enters low power mode,
>> indicating that the card is no longer in use. This would seem to
>> confirm that the GPU is indeed in use by the PhysX API correctly.
>> 
>> My assumption now is that the IRQs from the video card are getting 
>> lost.
>> 
>> I could be completely off base here but at this point it seems like 
>> the
>> best way to proceed unless someone cares to comment.
>> 
>> -Geoff
>> 
>> 
>> On 2017-10-24 10:49, geoff at hostfission.com wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I realize this is an older thread but I have spent much of today 
>>> trying to
>>> diagnose the problem.
>>> 
>>> I have discovered how to reliably reproduce the problem with very 
>>> little effort.
>>> It seems that reproducing the issue has been hit and miss for people 
>>> as it seems
>>> to primarily affect games/programs that make use of nVidia PhysX. My
>>> understanding of npt's inner workings is quite primitive but I have 
>>> still spent
>>> much of my time trying to diagnose the fault and identify the cause.
>>> 
>>> Using the free program FluidMark[1] it is possible to reproduce the 
>>> issue, where
>>> on a GTX 1080Ti the rendering rate drops to around 4 fps with npt 
>>> turned on, but
>>> if turned off the render rate is in excess of 60fps.
>>> 
>>> I have produced traces for with and without ntp enabled during these 
>>> tests which
>>> I can provide if it will help. So far I have been digging through how 
>>> npt works
>>> and trying to glean as much information as I can from the source and 
>>> the AMD
>>> specifications but much of this and how mmu works is very new to me 
>>> so progress
>>> is slow.
>>> 
>>> If anyone else has looked into this and has more information to share 
>>> I would be
>>> very interested.
>>> 
>>> Kind Regards,
>>> Geoffrey McRae
>>> HostFission
>>> https://hostfission.com
>>> 
>>> 
>>> [1]:
>>> http://www.geeks3d.com/20130308/fluidmark-1-5-1-physx-benchmark-fluid-sph-simulation-opengl-download/