jrziviani

Tracing QEMU-KVM Interactions

But default in linux you can figure out how many times and for what reasons there is a VM Exit from a VM into the kvm kernel module. However given the ubiquity of vhost and the ability of kvm to emulate most device models directly in the kernel, most of those VM exits do not result in a transition from host kernel into the QEMU. The transitions from VM -> kvm -> QEMU are typically the most expensive.

Here we try to figure out how many of the VM Exits result in the invocation of QEMU.

Tracking VM-KVM Interactions

This can be done very simply with perf

jrziviani

Latency Comparison Numbers

Note: "Forked" from Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know

Event	Nanoseconds	Microseconds	Milliseconds	Comparison
L1 cache reference	0.5	-	-	-
Branch mispredict	5.0	-	-	-
L2 cache reference	7.0	-	-	14x L1 cache
Mutex lock/unlock	25.0	-	-	-

jrziviani

Latency Comparison Numbers
--------------------------
L1 cache reference                           0.5 ns
Branch mispredict                            5   ns
L2 cache reference                           7   ns                      14x L1 cache
Mutex lock/unlock                           25   ns
Main memory reference                      100   ns                      20x L2 cache, 200x L1 cache
Compress 1K bytes with Zippy             3,000   ns        3 us
Send 1K bytes over 1 Gbps network       10,000   ns       10 us
Read 4K randomly from SSD*             150,000   ns      150 us          ~1GB/sec SSD

jrziviani

#!/bin/bash

# load resources
xrdb -merge .Xresources

#xsetroot -solid '#222'&
# map caps lock as extra escape
xmodmap -e 'clear Lock' -e 'keycode 0x42 = Escape'&
# start clipboard manager
parcellite&