Re: [Qemu-devel] [PULL 1/1] update seabios to master snapshot

[Emilio G. Cota]

Hi Gerd,

On Tue, Nov 06, 2018 at 12:28:29 +0100, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> seabios 1.12 release is planned for november.
> 
> update seabios to a master branch snapshot so it gets more testing
> and to make the delta smaller when updating to -final during freeze.

I just bisected a performance regression for TCG-based x86 emulation
to this commit.

The issue is that after this patch, tlb_flush() gets called *way*
more often -- e.g. ~90,000 instead of ~400 times in the first second
or so when booting.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Add this debug print:

--- a/accel/tcg/cputlb.c
+++ b/accel/tcg/cputlb.c
@@ -183,6 +183,12 @@ void tlb_flush_by_mmuidx(CPUState *cpu, uint16_td)

 void tlb_flush(CPUState *cpu)
 {
+    static int count;
+
+    count++;
+    if (!(count % 100)) {
+        printf("%s: %d\n", __func__, count);
+    }
     tlb_flush_by_mmuidx(cpu, ALL_MMUIDX_BITS);
 }

2. build QEMU

3. invoke with:
  $ x86_64-softmmu/qemu-system-x86_64 -nographic

You should then see many "tlb_flush: N" lines, with N
reaching ~90,000 before the SeaBIOS banner comes out.

Note that before this patch, you should only see N == ~400
before reaching the banner.

How can I bisect seabios? I can't find a recipe to generate
the .bin files included in this commit.

Thanks,

                Emilio