Re: [PATCH v10 03/38] x86/msr: Add the WRMSRNS instruction support

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Fri, Sep 15 2023 at 00:46, andrew wrote:
> On 15/09/2023 12:00 am, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>> So no. I'm fundamentally disagreeing with your recommendation. The way
>> forward is:
>>
>>   1) Provide the native variant for wrmsrns(), i.e. rename the proposed
>>      wrmsrns() to native_wrmsr_ns() and have the X86_FEATURE_WRMSRNS
>>      safety net as you pointed out.
>>
>>      That function can be used in code which is guaranteed to be not
>>      affected by the PV_XXL madness.
>>
>>   2) Come up with a sensible solution for the PV_XXL horrorshow
>>
>>   3) Implement a sane general variant of wrmsr_ns() which handles
>>      both X86_FEATURE_WRMSRNS and X86_MISFEATURE_PV_XXL
>>
>>   4) Convert other code which benefits from the non-serializing variant
>>      to wrmsr_ns()
>
> Well - point 1 is mostly work that needs reverting as part of completing
> point 3, and point 2 clearly needs doing irrespective of anything else.

No. #1 has a value on its own independent of the general variant in #3.

>>      That function can be used in code which is guaranteed to be not
>>      affected by the PV_XXL madness.

That makes a lot of sense because it's guaranteed to generate better
code than whatever we come up with for the PV_XXL nonsense.

Thanks,

        tglx