CPUHotPlug

CPU Hotplug

CPU hotplug is a controverse feature. It exists on qemu-kvm for some time now, and according to some BZ movement, we know there are users for it. There are very few physical machines that actually support it. (Only one unisys box I know of), The Linux implementation follows what this specific box do, but happens to break Windows SVVP tests in an appearently unsolvable way. No one knows how to implement it on Windows, but it is believed that it should involve a windows-specific driver (to be written)

Hot-unplug does not work, and actually, does not even make that much sense.

Status

Linux guest support is pretty old, dating back to something around 2.6.19. qemu-kvm support exists, but merging it into qemu.git was not successful when tried, in the past. Reason being the BIOS changes, for the reasons already mentioned.

Testing

In any case, here's how to verify it:

• switch to the monitor
• type cpu_set <n+1> on
• A new cpu should appear on /sys/devices/system/cpu
• bring it online by writting 1 to the "online" file inside that directory
• Try adding as many cpus as possible, and make sure we at least do not crash.