Re: [PATCH 6/6] x86/gsseg: use the LKGS instruction if available for load_gs_index()

[Brian Gerst]

On Sat, Oct 8, 2022 at 1:40 AM Li, Xin3 <xin3.li@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > > +       alternative_io("1: call asm_load_gs_index\n"
> > > +                      ".pushsection \".fixup\",\"ax\"\n"
> > > +                      "2:      xorl %k[sel], %k[sel]\n"
> > > +                      "        jmp 1b\n"
> > > +                      ".popsection\n"
> > > +                      _ASM_EXTABLE(1b, 2b),
> > > +                      _ASM_BYTES(0x3e) LKGS_DI,
> > > +                      X86_FEATURE_LKGS,
> > > +                      ASM_OUTPUT2([sel] "+D" (sel), ASM_CALL_CONSTRAINT),
> > > +                      ASM_NO_INPUT_CLOBBER(_ASM_AX));
> > >  }
> > >
> > >  #endif /* CONFIG_X86_64 */
> > > --
> > > 2.34.1
> >
> > There are not that many call sites, so using something like this (incorporating
> > Peter Z's suggestion for the exception handler) would be better from a code
> > readability perspective vs. a tiny increase in code size.
>
> The existing approach patches the binary code thus we don't need to check it at runtime.

static_cpu_has() uses alternatives to patch the branch, so there is no
runtime check after early boot.

--
Brian Gerst