Re: [PATCH v2 5/5] x86/pti: Do not enable PTI on fixed Intel processors

[Andrew Cooper]

On 23/01/18 18:45, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 16:52:55 +0000
> David Woodhouse <dwmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> When they advertise the IA32_ARCH_CAPABILITIES MSR and it has the RDCL_NO
>> bit set, they don't need KPTI either.
> This is starting to get messy because we will eventually need to integrate
>
> AMD processors		-	no meltdown but spectre
> VIA processors		-	probably no vulnerabilities at
> 				least on the old ones
> Intel with ND set	-	No meltdown
> Anybody with no speculation -	No meltdown, no spectre, no id bit
>
>
>
> and it expands a lot with all sorts of 32bit processors. Would it make
> more sense to make it table driven or do we want a separate function so
> we can do:
>
>                 if (!in_order_cpu()) {
>                 }
>
> around the whole lot ? I'm guessing the latter makes sense then
> somethhing like this patch I'm running on my old atom widgets in 64bit
> mode
>
> static __initdata struct x86_cpu_id cpu_in_order[] = {
>         { X86_VENDOR_INTEL, 6, INTEL_FAM6_ATOM_CEDARVIEW, X86_FEATURE_ANY },
>         { X86_VENDOR_INTEL, 6, INTEL_FAM6_ATOM_CLOVERVIEW, X86_FEATURE_ANY },
>         { X86_VENDOR_INTEL, 6, INTEL_FAM6_ATOM_LINCROFT, X86_FEATURE_ANY },
>         { X86_VENDOR_INTEL, 6, INTEL_FAM6_ATOM_PENWELL, X86_FEATURE_ANY },
>         { X86_VENDOR_INTEL, 6, INTEL_FAM6_ATOM_PINEVIEW, X86_FEATURE_ANY },
>         {}
> };
>
> static int in_order_cpu(void)
> {
> 	/* Processors with CPU id etc */
> 	if (x86_match_cpu(cpu_in_order))
> 		return 1;
> 	/* Other rules here */
> 	return 0;
> }

Why does in-order vs out-of-order matter?

There are leaky SP3 gadgets which satisfy in-order requirements, so long
as the processor is capable of speculating 3 instructions past an
unresolved branch.

What would (at a guess) save an in-order speculative processor from
being vulnerable is if memory reads are issued and resolve in program
order, but in that case, it is not the in-order property of the
processor which makes it safe.

~Andrew