docs: virt: guest-halt-polling.txt convert to ReST

Due to some merge conflict, this file ended being alone under
Documentation/virtual.

The file itself is almost at ReST format. Just minor
adjustments are needed:

- Adjust title markup;
- Adjust a list identation;
- add a literal block markup;
- Add some blank lines.

Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>

2 files changed, 85 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/virt/guest-halt-polling.rst b/Documentation/virt/guest-halt-polling.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..b4e747942417
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/virt/guest-halt-polling.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@
+==================
+Guest halt polling
+==================
+
+The cpuidle_haltpoll driver, with the haltpoll governor, allows
+the guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before
+halting.
+
+This provides the following benefits to host side polling:
+
+	1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows
+	   a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated
+	   cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup.
+
+	2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided.
+
+The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed
+even with other runnable tasks in the host.
+
+The basic logic as follows: A global value, guest_halt_poll_ns,
+is configured by the user, indicating the maximum amount of
+time polling is allowed. This value is fixed.
+
+Each vcpu has an adjustable guest_halt_poll_ns
+("per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns"), which is adjusted by the algorithm
+in response to events (explained below).
+
+Module Parameters
+=================
+
+The haltpoll governor has 5 tunable module parameters:
+
+1) guest_halt_poll_ns:
+
+Maximum amount of time, in nanoseconds, that polling is
+performed before halting.
+
+Default: 200000
+
+2) guest_halt_poll_shrink:
+
+Division factor used to shrink per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when
+wakeup event occurs after the global guest_halt_poll_ns.
+
+Default: 2
+
+3) guest_halt_poll_grow:
+
+Multiplication factor used to grow per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
+when event occurs after per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
+but before global guest_halt_poll_ns.
+
+Default: 2
+
+4) guest_halt_poll_grow_start:
+
+The per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns eventually reaches zero
+in case of an idle system. This value sets the initial
+per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when growing. This can
+be increased from 10000, to avoid misses during the initial
+growth stage:
+
+10k, 20k, 40k, ... (example assumes guest_halt_poll_grow=2).
+
+Default: 50000
+
+5) guest_halt_poll_allow_shrink:
+
+Bool parameter which allows shrinking. Set to N
+to avoid it (per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns will remain
+high once achieves global guest_halt_poll_ns value).
+
+Default: Y
+
+The module parameters can be set from the debugfs files in::
+
+	/sys/module/haltpoll/parameters/
+
+Further Notes
+=============
+
+- Care should be taken when setting the guest_halt_poll_ns parameter as a
+  large value has the potential to drive the cpu usage to 100% on a machine
+  which would be almost entirely idle otherwise.
diff --git a/Documentation/virt/index.rst b/Documentation/virt/index.rst
index 0a8f7fda64ad..de1ab81df958 100644
--- a/Documentation/virt/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/virt/index.rst
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ Linux Virtualization Support
    kvm/index
    uml/user_mode_linux
    paravirt_ops
+   guest-halt-polling
 
 .. only:: html and subproject