Re: [PATCH] x86: KVM: Add feature flag for AMD's FsGsKernelGsBaseNonSerializing

From: Jim Mattson
Date: Thu Oct 05 2023 - 13:55:05 EST


On Thu, Oct 5, 2023 at 9:39 AM Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I agree with Jim that it would be nice to have some bits from Intel, and
> some bits from AMD, that current processors always return as 1. Future
> processors can change those to 0 as desired.

That's not quite what I meant.

Today, hypervisors will not pass through a non-zero CPUID bit that
they don't know the definition of. This makes sense for positive
features, and for multi-bit fields.

I'm suggesting a leaf devoted to single bit negative features. If a
bit is set in hardware, it means that something has been taken away.
Hypervisors don't need to know exactly what was taken away. For this
leaf only, hypervisors will always pass through a non-zero bit, even
if they have know idea what it means.