On 24 Apr 2000, Ulrich Drepper wrote:
> Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> writes:
>
> > To Do
> > -----
>
> Do you want to add:
>
> fix kernel handling of %fs and %gs registers on x86
>
> ?? It's preventing major optimizations in the thread library.
>
Previously, no kernel code I've seen used these registers so they are
never touched during a context-switch. If these are now used by the C
compiler, it is the responsibility of that compiler to preserve the
segment registers in its code generation so a potential problem has
been overlooked.
If a kernel procedure sleeps after the 'C' code has modified these
registers, but before they are restored, the task(s) that get the CPU will
have invalid registers. So I think the time has come to eat the few
machine cycles necessary to save and restore these registers.
Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.3.41 on an i686 machine (800.63 BogoMips).
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 30 2000 - 21:00:09 EST