Re: [PATCH] x86/asm/entry/64: better check for canonical address

From: Borislav Petkov
Date: Thu Apr 23 2015 - 11:49:41 EST


On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 08:41:15AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> I was rather vague there. Let me try again:
>
> If anyone in the AMD camp really cared, we could add a new bug flag
> X86_BUG_SYSRET_NEEDS_CANONICAL_RCX and set it on Intel chips only, so
> we could use alternatives to patch out the check when running on
> sensible AMD hardware. This would speed the slow path up by a couple
> of cycles on AMD chips.
>
> Does that make more sense? We could call it
> X86_BUG_SYSRET_NEEDS_CANONICAL_RIP if that makes more sense.

Actually "...NEEDS_CANONICAL_RCX" makes more sense as this is what we're
going to patch out eventually, if it makes sense - the RIP canonicalness
test is being done as part of SYSRET, just RCX is not being tested.

Tell you what - how about I perf stat this first by commenting out that
couple of instructions on AMD to see whether it brings anything.

Got an idea for a workload other than a kernel build? :-)

Although a kernel build should do a lot of syscalls too...

Thanks.

--
Regards/Gruss,
Boris.

ECO tip #101: Trim your mails when you reply.
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