Re: [PATCH 1/3] x86/entry: Clear extra registers beyond syscall arguments for 64bit kernels

[Ingo Molnar]

* Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Btw., to underline these arguments, here's some statistical data about actual 
> register usage the x86 kernel.

So this caveat was bothering me:

> List of caveats/notes:
> 
> Note #4:
>   The 'avg uses per fn' number is over-estimates the real uses per function,
>   because I counted total number of uses, not rounded down to a per function 
>   register usage heat-map. I believe this does not change the _ordering_ of the 
>   register usage histograms, so it's a valid simplification.

as averaging all uses over the functions over-estimates the per function usage of 
registers significantly, so I implemented a real, per function register usage 
tracking.

For the x86 defconfig kernel the results are:

  r11: used in   1704 fns, not used in  43310 fns, usage ratio:    3.8%
  r10: used in   3809 fns, not used in  41205 fns, usage ratio:    8.5%
  r15: used in   6599 fns, not used in  38415 fns, usage ratio:   14.7%
   r9: used in   8120 fns, not used in  36894 fns, usage ratio:   18.0%
  r14: used in   9243 fns, not used in  35771 fns, usage ratio:   20.5%
   r8: used in  12614 fns, not used in  32400 fns, usage ratio:   28.0%
  r13: used in  12708 fns, not used in  32306 fns, usage ratio:   28.2%
  r12: used in  17144 fns, not used in  27870 fns, usage ratio:   38.1%
  rbp: used in  23289 fns, not used in  21725 fns, usage ratio:   51.7%
  rcx: used in  23897 fns, not used in  21117 fns, usage ratio:   53.1%
  rbx: used in  29226 fns, not used in  15788 fns, usage ratio:   64.9%
  rdx: used in  33205 fns, not used in  11809 fns, usage ratio:   73.8%
  rsi: used in  35415 fns, not used in   9599 fns, usage ratio:   78.7%
  rdi: used in  40628 fns, not used in   4386 fns, usage ratio:   90.3%
  rax: used in  43120 fns, not used in   1894 fns, usage ratio:   95.8%

As a comparison, here's the previous estimate:

  # nr of =y .config options:  1255
  # nr of functions:           45490
  # nr of instructions:        1963956
  # nr of register uses:       3183680

  register | # of uses | avg uses per fn
  --------------------------------------
      %r11 |     11608 |       0.3
      %r10 |     23398 |       0.5
      %r9  |     37431 |       0.8
      %r8  |     56140 |       1.2
      %r15 |     77468 |       1.7
      %r14 |     89285 |       2.0
      %r13 |    111665 |       2.5
      %r12 |    151977 |       3.3
      %rcx |    166425 |       3.7
      %rsi |    226536 |       5.0
      %rbp |    238286 |       5.2
      %rdi |    306709 |       6.7
      %rdx |    313569 |       6.9
      %rbx |    349496 |       7.7
      %rax |    728036 |      16.0

The ordering of the registers is similar, but it's not the same - and the actual 
percentages changed drastically.

In particular R10 and R11 are used only in a small minority of the functions:

  r11: used in   1704 fns, not used in  43310 fns, usage ratio:    3.8%
  r10: used in   3809 fns, not used in  41205 fns, usage ratio:    8.5%

and if deeper inside the kernel a Spectre-gadget uses R10 or R11 then chances are 
high that user-space R10/R11 values will be passed through to it without 
disturbance from other C functions.

So I think these numbers increase the urgency of clearing R10/R11 as well.

Note that this too is still only a statistical estimate, the _real_ impact could 
only be judged if we created a call graph of the whole kernel, with 100% coverage, 
and analyzed register use through this tree.

The other registers:

  r15: used in   6599 fns, not used in  38415 fns, usage ratio:   14.7%
   r9: used in   8120 fns, not used in  36894 fns, usage ratio:   18.0%
  r14: used in   9243 fns, not used in  35771 fns, usage ratio:   20.5%
   r8: used in  12614 fns, not used in  32400 fns, usage ratio:   28.0%
  r13: used in  12708 fns, not used in  32306 fns, usage ratio:   28.2%
  r12: used in  17144 fns, not used in  27870 fns, usage ratio:   38.1%

R12-R15 will be cleared with tis patchset, so that angle should be handled, which 
leaves us:

   r9: used in   8120 fns, not used in  36894 fns, usage ratio:   18.0%
   r8: used in  12614 fns, not used in  32400 fns, usage ratio:   28.0%

These are arguments #5 and #6 of the x86-64 C calling convention ABI. In practice 
they will be overwritten in many code paths - especially they will be overwritten 
in some of the richer ABIs of Linux: ioctls, socketcalls and the other high level 
demux system calls.

R8 is also spontaneously used by GCC once a function's size grows about ~130 
instructions. For R9 the average threshold is about ~160 instructions.

Thanks,

	Ingo