Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 21:35:31 +0200
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
To: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo2.kernel.org@gmail.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
        Fenghua Yu <fenghua.yu@intel.com>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 084/208] x86/fpu: Rename xsave.header::xstate_bv to
 'xfeatures'
Message-ID: <20150507193531.GA23511@gmail.com>
References: <1430848300-27877-6-git-send-email-mingo@kernel.org>
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 <20150505181613.GA28562@gmail.com>
 <55490B1F.3080409@linux.intel.com>
 <20150506061603.GA13720@gmail.com>
 <554A5D23.2030405@linux.intel.com>
 <20150507122209.GB15656@gmail.com>
 <554B7DAA.3040606@linux.intel.com>
 <20150507153302.GA20993@gmail.com>
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* Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> wrote:

> >> It's not a problem today because the instruction mask is always 
> >> -1, so it always has every bit set that *MIGHT* be set in 
> >> XSTATE_BV.
> > 
> > Yes. And why would we ever want to narrow it?
> 
> Because it actually allows us to take advantage of the compaction. 
> Think of the layout of a task using protection keys and MPX.
> 
> MPX = 8*4 + 8*2 = 48 bytes.
> PKEYs = 4 bytes
> 
> They'll be spread out in the standard form *OR* the compacted form 
> with a RFBM=-1.  But, with the compacted form with RFBM=PK|MPX_BITS, 
> they'll fit in a cacheline.

but but ... if this is a normal userspace task then it will use AVX on 
modern Linux distros and then we are up to a 1K FPU context size 
already, 48 bytes won't make a visible dent - especially if compacted 
form has some saving cost. With AVX512 we are at around 2K?

I certainly don't _object_ to using the compacted format, as it makes 
sense and it's clearly getting quite a bit of attention from the 
hardware folks, but we should run some timings and such.

In any case I'm mostly just curious, not worried.

Thanks,

	Ingo
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