Re: possible CPU bug and request for Intel contacts

From: Kirill Korotaev
Date: Tue Jan 25 2005 - 09:13:17 EST


Hello Rohit,

BTW, can you explain why making pages non-global is the cure? Is it
safe workaround for this bug?
There is a boundary condition that can have non-global pages containing
the CR3 load to also hit this issue on affected PIII. Though for this
to happen, mov to cr3 has to be the very last instruction on a page.
And the page following that page (containing CR3 load) has to have
different mapping between user and kernel spaces.
but in our case "mov %edx, %cr3" is not the last instruction on a page. It is in the middle of it.
Well, another remark is that after cr3 load there are only few instructions before the "call system_call_table(%edx)" which references the page with different user and kernel mappings.

also, this bug can be cured via inserting about 20 simple operations between cr3 load and call to the page with overlapping mappings.

I'm just trying to understand is it the bug referenced in E80 or not and is it safe to use non-global mappings as a cure.

Kirill

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