[PATCH v2 0/12] Hypervisor-mode KVM on POWER7

[Alexander Graf]

On 31.05.2011, at 14:35, Paul Mackerras wrote:

> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 12:40:31PM +0200, Alexander Graf wrote:
> 
>> Thinking about the testability of this a bit more ... how much
>> effort would it be to get this code running on a 970MP with SLOF?
>> There should only be a few POWER7 specific pieces, right?
> 
> Do you have a 970MP that has a usable hypervisor mode, i.e. not an
> Apple machine?  The 970s in Apple machines have the HV hard-wired to
> 1, which means they do have a hypervisor mode but it isn't any use.
> 
> If you do have such a machine, then we would have to look at some
> details like the instruction sequence for the partition switch, and
> make sure we don't try to use SMT4 mode.  Also, I believe we will have
> to flush the TLB on partition switches, since Power processors prior
> to POWER7 didn't tag the TLB entries with the partition ID.
> 
> So it should be quite feasible if you have a non-Apple machine.
> I will check whether the 970MP machines that Terrasoft were
> distributing would be suitable.  We have one of them in the lab.

That's the one I was thinking of and yes, I have one available. That way I could test 99% of your code, you don't have to release hardware, and everyone's happy :).


Alex