Re: [PATCH] x86: write aligned to 8 bytes in copy_user_generic (when without FSRM/ERMS)

[Mateusz Guzik]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 3:22 PM Herton R. Krzesinski <herton@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> diff --git a/arch/x86/lib/copy_user_64.S b/arch/x86/lib/copy_user_64.S
> index fc9fb5d06174..b8f74d80f35c 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/lib/copy_user_64.S
> +++ b/arch/x86/lib/copy_user_64.S
> @@ -74,6 +74,24 @@ SYM_FUNC_START(rep_movs_alternative)
>         _ASM_EXTABLE_UA( 0b, 1b)
>
>  .Llarge_movsq:
> +       /* Do the first possibly unaligned word */
> +0:     movq (%rsi),%rax
> +1:     movq %rax,(%rdi)
> +
> +       _ASM_EXTABLE_UA( 0b, .Lcopy_user_tail)
> +       _ASM_EXTABLE_UA( 1b, .Lcopy_user_tail)
> +
> +       /* What would be the offset to the aligned destination? */
> +       leaq 8(%rdi),%rax
> +       andq $-8,%rax
> +       subq %rdi,%rax
> +
> +       /* .. and update pointers and count to match */
> +       addq %rax,%rdi
> +       addq %rax,%rsi
> +       subq %rax,%rcx
> +
> +       /* make %rcx contain the number of words, %rax the remainder */
>         movq %rcx,%rax
>         shrq $3,%rcx
>         andl $7,%eax

The patch looks fine to me, but there is more to do if you are up for it.

It was quite some time since I last seriously played with the area and
I don't remember all the details, on top of that realities of uarchs
probably improved.

That said, have you experimented with aligning the target to 16 bytes
or more bytes?

Moreover, I have some recollection that there were uarchs with ERMS
which also liked the target to be aligned -- as in perhaps this should
be done regardless of FSRM?

And most importantly memset, memcpy and clear_user would all use a
revamp and they are missing rep handling for bigger sizes (I verified
they *do* show up). Not only that, but memcpy uses overlapping stores
while memset just loops over stuff.

I intended to sort it out long time ago and maybe will find some time
now that I got reminded of it, but I would be deligthed if it got
picked up.

Hacking this up is just some screwing around, the real time consuming
part is the benchmarking so I completely understand if you are not
interested.

-- 
Mateusz Guzik <mjguzik gmail.com>