Re: [PATCH 3/4] x86_64: Fold pda into per cpu area

From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge
Date: Wed Jun 04 2008 - 09:00:51 EST


Mike Travis wrote:
* Declare the pda as a per cpu variable.

* Make the x86_64 per cpu area start at zero.

* Since the pda is now the first element of the per_cpu area, cpu_pda()
is no longer needed and per_cpu() can be used instead. This also makes
the _cpu_pda[] table obsolete.

* Since %gs is pointing to the pda, it will then also point to the per cpu
variables and can be accessed thusly:

%gs:[&per_cpu_xxxx - __per_cpu_start]

Unfortunately that doesn't actually work, because you can't have a reloc with two variables.

In something like:

mov %gs:per_cpu__foo - 12345, %rax
mov %gs:per_cpu__foo, %rax
mov %gs:per_cpu__foo - 12345(%rip), %rax
mov %gs:per_cpu__foo(%rip), %rax
mov %gs:per_cpu__foo - __per_cpu_start, %rax
mov %gs:per_cpu__foo - __per_cpu_start(%rip), %rax

the last two lines will not assemble:

t.S:5: Error: can't resolve `per_cpu__foo' {*UND* section} - `__per_cpu_start' {*UND* section}
t.S:6: Error: can't resolve `per_cpu__foo' {*UND* section} - `__per_cpu_start' {*UND* section}

Unfortunately, the only way I can think of fixing this is to compute the offset into a temp register, then use that:

lea per_cpu__foo(%rip), %rax
mov %gs:__per_cpu_offset(%rax), %rax

(where __per_cpu_offset is defined in the linker script as -__per_cpu_start).

This seems to be a general problem with zero-offset per-cpu. And its unfortunate, because no-register access to per-cpu variables is nice to have.

The other alternative - and I have no idea whether this is practical or possible - is to define a complete set of pre-offset per_cpu symbols.

J
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