Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] x86/cpu/AMD: Make LFENCE a serializing instruction on AMD

[Dan Williams]

On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 2:09 PM, Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> To aid in speculation control, the LFENCE instruction will be turned into
> a serializing instruction. There is less performance impact using LFENCE
> in this way compared to MFENCE.
>
> With LFENCE now being a serializing instruction, it can be also used in
> rdtsc_ordered() in preference to MFENCE_RDTSC.  Since the kernel could
> be running under a hypervisor that does not allow writing to that MSR,
> it must be first verified that the write was successful before setting
> the LFENCE_RDTSC feature.
>
> The following patches are included in this series:
> - Make LFENCE a serializing instruction on AMD
> - Use LFENCE_RDTSC in preference to MFENCE_RDTSC on AMD
>
> This patch series is based on tip:x86/pti.
>
> ---
>
> Changes from v1:
> - Add a check verifying the MSR was actually updated
> - Remove the third patch that eliminates the MFENCE_RDTSC feature
>   (since the feature is still needed)
> - Adding Dan Williams to the cc since this will impact nospec_barrier(),
>   which will require an alternative_2 to add an MFENCE instruction with
>   an MFENCE_RDTSC check

Thanks Tom, I'll include this in the next posting of the variant-1 patch series.