Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751858AbbEGMWR (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 May 2015 08:22:17 -0400 Received: from mail-wi0-f175.google.com ([209.85.212.175]:38116 "EHLO mail-wi0-f175.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751050AbbEGMWO (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 May 2015 08:22:14 -0400 Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 14:22:09 +0200 From: Ingo Molnar To: Dave Hansen Cc: Ingo Molnar , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andy Lutomirski , Borislav Petkov , Fenghua Yu , "H. Peter Anvin" , Linus Torvalds , Oleg Nesterov , Thomas Gleixner Subject: Re: [PATCH 084/208] x86/fpu: Rename xsave.header::xstate_bv to 'xfeatures' Message-ID: <20150507122209.GB15656@gmail.com> References: <1430848300-27877-1-git-send-email-mingo@kernel.org> <1430848300-27877-6-git-send-email-mingo@kernel.org> <554904A6.8040503@linux.intel.com> <20150505181613.GA28562@gmail.com> <55490B1F.3080409@linux.intel.com> <20150506061603.GA13720@gmail.com> <554A5D23.2030405@linux.intel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: <554A5D23.2030405@linux.intel.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 4519 Lines: 119 * Dave Hansen wrote: > On 05/05/2015 11:16 PM, Ingo Molnar wrote: > > Btw., does Intel have any special plans with xstate compaction? > > > > AFAICS in Linux we just want to enable xfeat_mask_all to the max, > > including compaction, and never really modify it (in the task's > > lifetime). > > Special plans? I.e. are there any plans beyond using it strictly for full state save/restore. > If we do an XRSTORS on it before we do an XSAVES, then we need to > worry. But, if we do an XSAVES, the CPU will set it up for us. > > > I'm also wondering whether there will be any real 'holes' in the > > xfeatures capability masks of future CPUs: right now xfeatures > > tend to be already 'compacted' (because new CPUs tend to support > > all xfeatures), so compaction mostly appears to be an academic > > feature. Or is there already hardware out there where it matter? > > There is a hole in the SDM today. See section 2.6 in the currently > released 054 version. I also know of actual hardware platforms with > holes. *PLUS*, someone can always shot down CPUID bits in their > hypervisor or with kernel command-line options. I see, so MPX (bits 3 and 4) aren't there yet. Btw., there's a new xfeature it appears: XCR0.PKRU (bit 9): If 1, the XSAVE feature set can be used to manage the PKRU register (see Section 2.7). and bit 8 is a hole again. Btw., regarding XCR0.PKRU: that enables 'Protection Keys' in the PTE format. What's the main purpose of these keys? They seem to duplicate the read/write bits in the PTE, with the exception that they don't impact instruction fetches. So is this used to allow user-space to execute but otherwise not read instructions? Or some other purpose I missed? In any case, these holes are really minor at the moment, and the question is, what is the performance difference between a 'compactede' XSAVE*/XRSTOR* pair, versus a standard format one? > > Maybe once we get AVX512 in addition to MPX we can use compaction > > materially: as there will be lots of tasks without MPX state but > > with AVX512 state - in fact I suspect that will be the common > > case. > > Right. > > But we'd need to get to a point where we are calling 'xsaves' with a > Requested Feature BitMask (aka RFBM[]) that had holes in it. As it > stands today, we always call it with RFBM=-1 and so we always have > XCOMP_BV = XCR0. XCOMP_BV must also have bit 63 set. 13.8.1 Standard Form of XRSTOR The standard from of XRSTOR performs additional fault checking. Either of the following conditions causes ageneral-protection exception (#GP): The XSTATE_BV field of the XSAVE header sets a bit that is not set in XCR0. Bytes 23:8 of the XSAVE header are not all 0 (this implies ^^^^^^^^^^^^ that all bits in XCOMP_BV are 0). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Note the part I underlined: all of XCOMP_BV has to be 0 for any standard form of XRSTOR, and if we use a compacted form, bit 63 must be set: this is why bit 63 is a nonsensical interface: it being nonzero already tells the hardware that we requested compaction ... > We'd need to determine which fields are in the init state before we > do an xsaves. Why? I don't think that's necessary. The way I read the SDM both the 'init' and the 'modified' optimizations are mostly automatic: the CPU determines it automatically when a state component is (or returned to!) init state, and signals that via the relevant bit in XSTATE_BV being zeroed out. This is what the SDM says about XSAVES (section 13.11 in the 054 SDM): — If state component i is in its initial configuration, XSTATE_BV[i] may be written with either 0 or 1. so XSAVES itself performs the first step of the 'init optimization', automatically: it will opportunistically write 0 to the relevant bit in XSTATE_BV and won't save the state. Once there's 0 in XSTATE_BV, put there by XSAVES, the XRSTOR instruction is able to perform the other half of the optimization: by not restoring it but initializing it (if needed). XSAVES will also set up XSTATE_BV and XCOMP_BV so that XRSTOR does not have to worry about it, it will do a compacted restore. Thanks, Ingo -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/