I am using QEMU 2.5.0 with a 4 core set up and was expecting that the load
of the system would be minimal, as none of the 4 core cpus are really
doing anything. Each is awating a core specific timer interrupt, writes a
few characters to the QEMU screen, and then waits for the next timer
interrupt.
What I see is that the QEMU-process is running at full rate (12,5% = 1
entire core-cpu out of 8 in a Windows7 environment).
The previous QEMU version I ran with (0.14.50) was hardly showing any
load, so it must have managed to put the QEMU core(s) to sleep, but 2.5
just hammers off cpu time, probably polling rather than "Windows-waiting".
I have tried to track what is going on, but had to give up, as this
appears to be very complex.
The cpus.c source in the qemu_wait_io_event_common() function has this
code:
while (all_cpu_threads_idle()) {
/* Start accounting real time to the virtual clock if the CPUs
are idle. */
qemu_clock_warp(QEMU_CLOCK_VIRTUAL);
qemu_cond_wait(cpu->halt_cond, &qemu_global_mutex);
}
When all 4 cores are idle the qemu_clock_warp() function decides that the
clock can 'warp', but here I would have thought that the loop should have
been exited, so we could get to the nearest 'waiting-point' to fall
asleep, until an interrupt would wake us up again. Instead we stay inside
this loop, until one of the cpus is not idle anymore.
I have experimentally tried to exit the while-loop when the
qemu_clock_warp() function finds out that it can 'warp', but it made no
difference.
The only place I can see where the cpus might be sleeping is inside
main-loop.c inside the os_host_main_loop_wait() function (or called from
that), but the word 'poll' is all over the place, so I fear it is polling
until the wait is done, and not awaiting a Windows selective wait call for
interrupts or other events.
My question is therefore: Does 2.5 offer a way at all for the cores to
Windows-sleep (wait) until an event occurs?
As written above this used to work with 0.14.50, so I would think it was
possible.
Right now this appears to be an unnecessary waste of power, and my i7
laptop gets noticably hot when the core QEMU is running inside is totally
monopolized.
Kind regards
Thorkil B. Rasmussen
