Based on kernel version 2.6.39.1. Page generated on 2011-06-03 13:47 EST.
1 The x86 kvm shadow mmu 2 ====================== 3 4 The mmu (in arch/x86/kvm, files mmu.[ch] and paging_tmpl.h) is responsible 5 for presenting a standard x86 mmu to the guest, while translating guest 6 physical addresses to host physical addresses. 7 8 The mmu code attempts to satisfy the following requirements: 9 10 - correctness: the guest should not be able to determine that it is running 11 on an emulated mmu except for timing (we attempt to comply 12 with the specification, not emulate the characteristics of 13 a particular implementation such as tlb size) 14 - security: the guest must not be able to touch host memory not assigned 15 to it 16 - performance: minimize the performance penalty imposed by the mmu 17 - scaling: need to scale to large memory and large vcpu guests 18 - hardware: support the full range of x86 virtualization hardware 19 - integration: Linux memory management code must be in control of guest memory 20 so that swapping, page migration, page merging, transparent 21 hugepages, and similar features work without change 22 - dirty tracking: report writes to guest memory to enable live migration 23 and framebuffer-based displays 24 - footprint: keep the amount of pinned kernel memory low (most memory 25 should be shrinkable) 26 - reliability: avoid multipage or GFP_ATOMIC allocations 27 28 Acronyms 29 ======== 30 31 pfn host page frame number 32 hpa host physical address 33 hva host virtual address 34 gfn guest frame number 35 gpa guest physical address 36 gva guest virtual address 37 ngpa nested guest physical address 38 ngva nested guest virtual address 39 pte page table entry (used also to refer generically to paging structure 40 entries) 41 gpte guest pte (referring to gfns) 42 spte shadow pte (referring to pfns) 43 tdp two dimensional paging (vendor neutral term for NPT and EPT) 44 45 Virtual and real hardware supported 46 =================================== 47 48 The mmu supports first-generation mmu hardware, which allows an atomic switch 49 of the current paging mode and cr3 during guest entry, as well as 50 two-dimensional paging (AMD's NPT and Intel's EPT). The emulated hardware 51 it exposes is the traditional 2/3/4 level x86 mmu, with support for global 52 pages, pae, pse, pse36, cr0.wp, and 1GB pages. Work is in progress to support 53 exposing NPT capable hardware on NPT capable hosts. 54 55 Translation 56 =========== 57 58 The primary job of the mmu is to program the processor's mmu to translate 59 addresses for the guest. Different translations are required at different 60 times: 61 62 - when guest paging is disabled, we translate guest physical addresses to 63 host physical addresses (gpa->hpa) 64 - when guest paging is enabled, we translate guest virtual addresses, to 65 guest physical addresses, to host physical addresses (gva->gpa->hpa) 66 - when the guest launches a guest of its own, we translate nested guest 67 virtual addresses, to nested guest physical addresses, to guest physical 68 addresses, to host physical addresses (ngva->ngpa->gpa->hpa) 69 70 The primary challenge is to encode between 1 and 3 translations into hardware 71 that support only 1 (traditional) and 2 (tdp) translations. When the 72 number of required translations matches the hardware, the mmu operates in 73 direct mode; otherwise it operates in shadow mode (see below). 74 75 Memory 76 ====== 77 78 Guest memory (gpa) is part of the user address space of the process that is 79 using kvm. Userspace defines the translation between guest addresses and user 80 addresses (gpa->hva); note that two gpas may alias to the same hva, but not 81 vice versa. 82 83 These hvas may be backed using any method available to the host: anonymous 84 memory, file backed memory, and device memory. Memory might be paged by the 85 host at any time. 86 87 Events 88 ====== 89 90 The mmu is driven by events, some from the guest, some from the host. 91 92 Guest generated events: 93 - writes to control registers (especially cr3) 94 - invlpg/invlpga instruction execution 95 - access to missing or protected translations 96 97 Host generated events: 98 - changes in the gpa->hpa translation (either through gpa->hva changes or 99 through hva->hpa changes) 100 - memory pressure (the shrinker) 101 102 Shadow pages 103 ============ 104 105 The principal data structure is the shadow page, 'struct kvm_mmu_page'. A 106 shadow page contains 512 sptes, which can be either leaf or nonleaf sptes. A 107 shadow page may contain a mix of leaf and nonleaf sptes. 108 109 A nonleaf spte allows the hardware mmu to reach the leaf pages and 110 is not related to a translation directly. It points to other shadow pages. 111 112 A leaf spte corresponds to either one or two translations encoded into 113 one paging structure entry. These are always the lowest level of the 114 translation stack, with optional higher level translations left to NPT/EPT. 115 Leaf ptes point at guest pages. 116 117 The following table shows translations encoded by leaf ptes, with higher-level 118 translations in parentheses: 119 120 Non-nested guests: 121 nonpaging: gpa->hpa 122 paging: gva->gpa->hpa 123 paging, tdp: (gva->)gpa->hpa 124 Nested guests: 125 non-tdp: ngva->gpa->hpa (*) 126 tdp: (ngva->)ngpa->gpa->hpa 127 128 (*) the guest hypervisor will encode the ngva->gpa translation into its page 129 tables if npt is not present 130 131 Shadow pages contain the following information: 132 role.level: 133 The level in the shadow paging hierarchy that this shadow page belongs to. 134 1=4k sptes, 2=2M sptes, 3=1G sptes, etc. 135 role.direct: 136 If set, leaf sptes reachable from this page are for a linear range. 137 Examples include real mode translation, large guest pages backed by small 138 host pages, and gpa->hpa translations when NPT or EPT is active. 139 The linear range starts at (gfn << PAGE_SHIFT) and its size is determined 140 by role.level (2MB for first level, 1GB for second level, 0.5TB for third 141 level, 256TB for fourth level) 142 If clear, this page corresponds to a guest page table denoted by the gfn 143 field. 144 role.quadrant: 145 When role.cr4_pae=0, the guest uses 32-bit gptes while the host uses 64-bit 146 sptes. That means a guest page table contains more ptes than the host, 147 so multiple shadow pages are needed to shadow one guest page. 148 For first-level shadow pages, role.quadrant can be 0 or 1 and denotes the 149 first or second 512-gpte block in the guest page table. For second-level 150 page tables, each 32-bit gpte is converted to two 64-bit sptes 151 (since each first-level guest page is shadowed by two first-level 152 shadow pages) so role.quadrant takes values in the range 0..3. Each 153 quadrant maps 1GB virtual address space. 154 role.access: 155 Inherited guest access permissions in the form uwx. Note execute 156 permission is positive, not negative. 157 role.invalid: 158 The page is invalid and should not be used. It is a root page that is 159 currently pinned (by a cpu hardware register pointing to it); once it is 160 unpinned it will be destroyed. 161 role.cr4_pae: 162 Contains the value of cr4.pae for which the page is valid (e.g. whether 163 32-bit or 64-bit gptes are in use). 164 role.nxe: 165 Contains the value of efer.nxe for which the page is valid. 166 role.cr0_wp: 167 Contains the value of cr0.wp for which the page is valid. 168 gfn: 169 Either the guest page table containing the translations shadowed by this 170 page, or the base page frame for linear translations. See role.direct. 171 spt: 172 A pageful of 64-bit sptes containing the translations for this page. 173 Accessed by both kvm and hardware. 174 The page pointed to by spt will have its page->private pointing back 175 at the shadow page structure. 176 sptes in spt point either at guest pages, or at lower-level shadow pages. 177 Specifically, if sp1 and sp2 are shadow pages, then sp1->spt[n] may point 178 at __pa(sp2->spt). sp2 will point back at sp1 through parent_pte. 179 The spt array forms a DAG structure with the shadow page as a node, and 180 guest pages as leaves. 181 gfns: 182 An array of 512 guest frame numbers, one for each present pte. Used to 183 perform a reverse map from a pte to a gfn. When role.direct is set, any 184 element of this array can be calculated from the gfn field when used, in 185 this case, the array of gfns is not allocated. See role.direct and gfn. 186 slot_bitmap: 187 A bitmap containing one bit per memory slot. If the page contains a pte 188 mapping a page from memory slot n, then bit n of slot_bitmap will be set 189 (if a page is aliased among several slots, then it is not guaranteed that 190 all slots will be marked). 191 Used during dirty logging to avoid scanning a shadow page if none if its 192 pages need tracking. 193 root_count: 194 A counter keeping track of how many hardware registers (guest cr3 or 195 pdptrs) are now pointing at the page. While this counter is nonzero, the 196 page cannot be destroyed. See role.invalid. 197 multimapped: 198 Whether there exist multiple sptes pointing at this page. 199 parent_pte/parent_ptes: 200 If multimapped is zero, parent_pte points at the single spte that points at 201 this page's spt. Otherwise, parent_ptes points at a data structure 202 with a list of parent_ptes. 203 unsync: 204 If true, then the translations in this page may not match the guest's 205 translation. This is equivalent to the state of the tlb when a pte is 206 changed but before the tlb entry is flushed. Accordingly, unsync ptes 207 are synchronized when the guest executes invlpg or flushes its tlb by 208 other means. Valid for leaf pages. 209 unsync_children: 210 How many sptes in the page point at pages that are unsync (or have 211 unsynchronized children). 212 unsync_child_bitmap: 213 A bitmap indicating which sptes in spt point (directly or indirectly) at 214 pages that may be unsynchronized. Used to quickly locate all unsychronized 215 pages reachable from a given page. 216 217 Reverse map 218 =========== 219 220 The mmu maintains a reverse mapping whereby all ptes mapping a page can be 221 reached given its gfn. This is used, for example, when swapping out a page. 222 223 Synchronized and unsynchronized pages 224 ===================================== 225 226 The guest uses two events to synchronize its tlb and page tables: tlb flushes 227 and page invalidations (invlpg). 228 229 A tlb flush means that we need to synchronize all sptes reachable from the 230 guest's cr3. This is expensive, so we keep all guest page tables write 231 protected, and synchronize sptes to gptes when a gpte is written. 232 233 A special case is when a guest page table is reachable from the current 234 guest cr3. In this case, the guest is obliged to issue an invlpg instruction 235 before using the translation. We take advantage of that by removing write 236 protection from the guest page, and allowing the guest to modify it freely. 237 We synchronize modified gptes when the guest invokes invlpg. This reduces 238 the amount of emulation we have to do when the guest modifies multiple gptes, 239 or when the a guest page is no longer used as a page table and is used for 240 random guest data. 241 242 As a side effect we have to resynchronize all reachable unsynchronized shadow 243 pages on a tlb flush. 244 245 246 Reaction to events 247 ================== 248 249 - guest page fault (or npt page fault, or ept violation) 250 251 This is the most complicated event. The cause of a page fault can be: 252 253 - a true guest fault (the guest translation won't allow the access) (*) 254 - access to a missing translation 255 - access to a protected translation 256 - when logging dirty pages, memory is write protected 257 - synchronized shadow pages are write protected (*) 258 - access to untranslatable memory (mmio) 259 260 (*) not applicable in direct mode 261 262 Handling a page fault is performed as follows: 263 264 - if needed, walk the guest page tables to determine the guest translation 265 (gva->gpa or ngpa->gpa) 266 - if permissions are insufficient, reflect the fault back to the guest 267 - determine the host page 268 - if this is an mmio request, there is no host page; call the emulator 269 to emulate the instruction instead 270 - walk the shadow page table to find the spte for the translation, 271 instantiating missing intermediate page tables as necessary 272 - try to unsynchronize the page 273 - if successful, we can let the guest continue and modify the gpte 274 - emulate the instruction 275 - if failed, unshadow the page and let the guest continue 276 - update any translations that were modified by the instruction 277 278 invlpg handling: 279 280 - walk the shadow page hierarchy and drop affected translations 281 - try to reinstantiate the indicated translation in the hope that the 282 guest will use it in the near future 283 284 Guest control register updates: 285 286 - mov to cr3 287 - look up new shadow roots 288 - synchronize newly reachable shadow pages 289 290 - mov to cr0/cr4/efer 291 - set up mmu context for new paging mode 292 - look up new shadow roots 293 - synchronize newly reachable shadow pages 294 295 Host translation updates: 296 297 - mmu notifier called with updated hva 298 - look up affected sptes through reverse map 299 - drop (or update) translations 300 301 Emulating cr0.wp 302 ================ 303 304 If tdp is not enabled, the host must keep cr0.wp=1 so page write protection 305 works for the guest kernel, not guest guest userspace. When the guest 306 cr0.wp=1, this does not present a problem. However when the guest cr0.wp=0, 307 we cannot map the permissions for gpte.u=1, gpte.w=0 to any spte (the 308 semantics require allowing any guest kernel access plus user read access). 309 310 We handle this by mapping the permissions to two possible sptes, depending 311 on fault type: 312 313 - kernel write fault: spte.u=0, spte.w=1 (allows full kernel access, 314 disallows user access) 315 - read fault: spte.u=1, spte.w=0 (allows full read access, disallows kernel 316 write access) 317 318 (user write faults generate a #PF) 319 320 Large pages 321 =========== 322 323 The mmu supports all combinations of large and small guest and host pages. 324 Supported page sizes include 4k, 2M, 4M, and 1G. 4M pages are treated as 325 two separate 2M pages, on both guest and host, since the mmu always uses PAE 326 paging. 327 328 To instantiate a large spte, four constraints must be satisfied: 329 330 - the spte must point to a large host page 331 - the guest pte must be a large pte of at least equivalent size (if tdp is 332 enabled, there is no guest pte and this condition is satisified) 333 - if the spte will be writeable, the large page frame may not overlap any 334 write-protected pages 335 - the guest page must be wholly contained by a single memory slot 336 337 To check the last two conditions, the mmu maintains a ->write_count set of 338 arrays for each memory slot and large page size. Every write protected page 339 causes its write_count to be incremented, thus preventing instantiation of 340 a large spte. The frames at the end of an unaligned memory slot have 341 artificically inflated ->write_counts so they can never be instantiated. 342 343 Further reading 344 =============== 345 346 - NPT presentation from KVM Forum 2008 347 http://www.linux-kvm.org/wiki/images/c/c8/KvmForum2008%24kdf2008_21.pdf