Re: [PATCH v5 2/2] x86/speculation: Enable cross-hyperthread spectre v2 STIBP mitigation

From: Tim Chen
Date: Tue Sep 11 2018 - 13:32:40 EST


On 09/10/2018 04:46 AM, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Sep 2018, Jiri Kosina wrote:
>
>>> That looks much more palatable. One missing piece is the sysfs
>>> mitigation file for spectre v2. That should reflect STIPB state as well.
>>
>> FWIW, we're missing a bit more in that area, namely RSB stuffing on
>> context switch, IBRS (even through only around fw) and IBPB; those are
>> only signalled in dmesg during bootup.
>
> Nah, IBPB is actuall there, sorry. So I'll add reporting of STIBP + fixup
> the missing reporting of RSB_CTXSW for v6.
>

I anticipate that STIBP could affect workloads with a lot of indirect
branches (see previous discussion with Andrea). We should have a
knob for people to opt in or opt out of STIBP.

Thanks.

Tim