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From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date:   Mon, 18 Jul 2022 14:01:43 -0700
Message-ID: <CAHk-=wgzo-we3gbw1jKbL_cO9CybjwLNKReVxhYybOcpqJMESw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [patch 00/38] x86/retbleed: Call depth tracking mitigation
To:     Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc:     LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        "the arch/x86 maintainers" <x86@kernel.org>,
        Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com>,
        Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@kernel.org>,
        Andrew Cooper <Andrew.Cooper3@citrix.com>,
        Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>,
        Johannes Wikner <kwikner@ethz.ch>,
        Alyssa Milburn <alyssa.milburn@linux.intel.com>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>, "H.J. Lu" <hjl.tools@gmail.com>,
        Joao Moreira <joao.moreira@intel.com>,
        Joseph Nuzman <joseph.nuzman@intel.com>,
        Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
        Juergen Gross <jgross@suse.com>,
        "Peter Zijlstra (Intel)" <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>,
        Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>
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On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 1:44 PM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
>
> Yes, Peter and I came from avoiding a new compiler and the overhead for
> everyone when putting the padding into the code. We realized only when
> staring at the perf data that this padding in front of the function
> might be an acceptable solution. I did some more tests today on different
> machines with mitigations=off with kernels compiled with and without
> that padding. I couldn't find a single test case where the result was
> outside of the usual noise. But then my tests are definitely incomplete.

Well, it sounds like it most definitely isn't a huge and obvious problem.

> Yes, I know. But it was horrible enough to find the right spot in that
> gcc maze. Then I was happy that I figured how to add the boolean
> option. I let real compiler people take care of the rest. HJL???
>
> And we need input from the Clang folks because their CFI work also puts
> stuff in front of the function entry, which nicely collides.

Yeah, looking at the gcc sources (I have them locally because it helps
with the gcc bug reports I've done over the years), that
ASM_OUTPUT_FUNCTION_PREFIX is very convenient, but it's too late to do
any inter-function alignment for, because it's already after the usual
function-alignment output.

So I guess the padding thing is largely tied together with alignment
of the function start, so that idea of having different padding and
alignment bytes doesn't workl that well.

At least not in that ASM_OUTPUT_FUNCTION_PREFIX model, which is how
the gcc patch ends up being so small.

               Linus