On 04/07/2016 16:04, trasmus...@ddci.com wrote:
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
I am not completely familiar with the qemu source code, however
qemu_cond_wait() looks a lot like the POSIX call
pthread_cond_wait(), which should release the host CPU until
"halt_cond" is signalled by another thread. If this is it's
purpose, but if it keeps looping anyway, then maybe there is
something wrong with the Windows port of qemu_cond_wait().
Enjoy
Jakob
--
Jakob Bohm, CIO, Partner, WiseMo A/S. https://www.wisemo.com
Transformervej 29, 2860 Søborg, Denmark. Direct +45 31 13 16 10
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