Windows lets applications choose the frequency of the timer tick,
and in Windows 10 the maximum rate was changed from 1024 Hz to
2048 Hz. Unfortunately, because of the way the Windows API
works, most applications who need a higher rate than the default
64 Hz will just do
timeGetDevCaps(&tc, sizeof(tc));
timeBeginPeriod(tc.wPeriodMin);
and pick the maximum rate. This causes very high CPU usage when
playing media or games on Windows 10, even if the guest does not
actually use the CPU very much, because the frequent timer tick
causes halt_poll_ns to kick in.
There is no really good solution, especially because Microsoft
could sooner or later bump the limit to 4096 Hz, but for now
the best we can do is lower a bit the upper limit for
halt_poll_ns. :-(
Reported-by: Jon Panozzo <jonp@lime-technology.com>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
14ebda3394