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So the dwarf2 annotations in low level assembly code have
become an increasing hindrance: unreadable, messy macros
mixed into some of the most security sensitive code paths
of the Linux kernel.
These debug info annotations don't even buy the upstream
kernel anything: dwarf driven stack unwinding has caused
problems in the past so it's out of tree, and the upstream
kernel only uses the much more robust framepointers based
stack unwinding method.
In addition to that there's a steady, slow bitrot going
on with these annotations, requiring frequent fixups.
There's no tooling and no functionality upstream that
keeps it correct.
So burn down the sick forest, allowing new, healthier growth:
27 files changed, 350 insertions(+), 1101 deletions(-)
Someone who has the willingness and time to do this
properly can attempt to reintroduce dwarf debuginfo in x86
assembly code plus dwarf unwinding from first principles,
with the following conditions:
- it should be maximally readable, and maximally low-key to
'ordinary' code reading and maintenance.
- find a build time method to insert dwarf annotations
automatically in the most common cases, for pop/push
instructions that manipulate the stack pointer. This could
be done for example via a preprocessing step that just
looks for common patterns - plus special annotations for
the few cases where we want to depart from the default.
We have hundreds of CFI annotations, so automating most of
that makes sense.
- it should come with build tooling checks that ensure that
CFI annotations are sensible. We've seen such efforts from
the framepointer side, and there's no reason it couldn't be
done on the dwarf side.
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: Frédéric Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Jan Beulich <JBeulich@suse.com>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
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By the nature of the TEST operation, it is often possible to test
a narrower part of the operand:
"testl $3, mem" -> "testb $3, mem",
"testq $3, %rcx" -> "testb $3, %cl"
This results in shorter instructions, because the TEST instruction
has no sign-entending byte-immediate forms unlike other ALU ops.
Note that this change does not create any LCP (Length-Changing Prefix)
stalls, which happen when adding a 0x66 prefix, which happens when
16-bit immediates are used, which changes such TEST instructions:
[test_opcode] [modrm] [imm32]
to:
[0x66] [test_opcode] [modrm] [imm16]
where [imm16] has a *different length* now: 2 bytes instead of 4.
This confuses the decoder and slows down execution.
REX prefixes were carefully designed to almost never hit this case:
adding REX prefix does not change instruction length except MOVABS
and MOV [addr],RAX instruction.
This patch does not add instructions which would use a 0x66 prefix,
code changes in assembly are:
-48 f7 07 01 00 00 00 testq $0x1,(%rdi)
+f6 07 01 testb $0x1,(%rdi)
-48 f7 c1 01 00 00 00 test $0x1,%rcx
+f6 c1 01 test $0x1,%cl
-48 f7 c1 02 00 00 00 test $0x2,%rcx
+f6 c1 02 test $0x2,%cl
-41 f7 c2 01 00 00 00 test $0x1,%r10d
+41 f6 c2 01 test $0x1,%r10b
-48 f7 c1 04 00 00 00 test $0x4,%rcx
+f6 c1 04 test $0x4,%cl
-48 f7 c1 08 00 00 00 test $0x8,%rcx
+f6 c1 08 test $0x8,%cl
Linus further notes:
"There are no stalls from using 8-bit instruction forms.
Now, changing from 64-bit or 32-bit 'test' instructions to 8-bit ones
*could* cause problems if it ends up having forwarding issues, so that
instead of just forwarding the result, you end up having to wait for
it to be stable in the L1 cache (or possibly the register file). The
forwarding from the store buffer is simplest and most reliable if the
read is done at the exact same address and the exact same size as the
write that gets forwarded.
But that's true only if:
(a) the write was very recent and is still in the write queue. I'm
not sure that's the case here anyway.
(b) on at least most Intel microarchitectures, you have to test a
different byte than the lowest one (so forwarding a 64-bit write
to a 8-bit read ends up working fine, as long as the 8-bit read
is of the low 8 bits of the written data).
A very similar issue *might* show up for registers too, not just
memory writes, if you use 'testb' with a high-byte register (where
instead of forwarding the value from the original producer it needs to
go through the register file and then shifted). But it's mainly a
problem for store buffers.
But afaik, the way Denys changed the test instructions, neither of the
above issues should be true.
The real problem for store buffer forwarding tends to be "write 8
bits, read 32 bits". That can be really surprisingly expensive,
because the read ends up having to wait until the write has hit the
cacheline, and we might talk tens of cycles of latency here. But
"write 32 bits, read the low 8 bits" *should* be fast on pretty much
all x86 chips, afaik."
Signed-off-by: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Acked-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@linux.intel.com>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Will Drewry <wad@chromium.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1425675332-31576-1-git-send-email-dvlasenk@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
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