HVM performance deficiencies

[Wolfgang Solfrank <Wolfgang%Solfrank.net@localhost>]

Hi,

NetBSD has several performance deficiencies when run as an HVM guest
under Xen.  The problem stems from the fact that the qemu hardware
emulation isn't completely compatible with real hardware, and our
drivers misidentify and/or misuse some features:

1. While the emulated IDE-controller (part of the PIIX3 chipset)
is capable of DMA (but not UDMA), and the emulated disk claims to
support DMA mode 2 and UDMA mode 5, this is not detected.  The
problem is that the disk claims to not support any PIO modes.
Our ata driver finds this suspicious and assumes that DMA would
be buggy, too (see sys/dev/ata.c, around line 1260), using only
PIO mode 0 subsequently.  This results in excess interrupt
handling overhead in the wd driver.

2. The emulated realtek 8139C+ device doesn't implement the
timer interrupt (while there is a compile time option in qemu
to enable this, it's normally disabled, and I'm not sure whether
it would be of much help either).  This interrupt is unconditionally
(in contrast to the FreeBSD driver, which our driver claims to
be based upon) used within our re(4) driver to reduce the transmission
interrupt rate, i.e., the driver doesn't use 'TX done' interrupts, but
instead posts several packets for transmission and then starts
the timer for some short period, handling transmission completion
when the timer triggers.  As the emulated device doesn't implement
this timer, we get a lot of watchdog timeouts (see PR#41679).

While both could be fixed in qemu, there are situations where
the qemu implementation isn't under the control of someone
running NetBSD under Xen.  And as the OS is running as an HVM
guest in this instances, the drivers should probably deal with
this by default.

So how to fix this?  Is runtime detection of the problem appropriate?
If so, should it be targeted at qemu only (e.g. by comparing the
disk model against "QEMU HARDDISK"), or should we aim for some
wider approach (like always checking DMA modes even if the drive
doesn't claim to support any PIO modes)?

Ciao,
Wolfgang
--
Wolfgang%Solfrank.net@localhost                         Wolfgang Solfrank