Re: [beta patch] SSE copy_page() / clear_page()

[Manfred Spraul <manfred@colorfullife.com>]

Doug Ledford wrote:
> 
> > I have this strong suspicion that your kernel will lock up in a bad way
> > of you have somebody do something like divide by zero without actually
> > touching a single FP instruction after the divide (so that the error has
> > happened, but has not yet been raised as an exception).
> 
> Or much worse, let the kernel mix-and-match SSE and MMX optimized routines
> without doing full saves of the FPU on SSE routines, which leads to FPU saves
> in MMX routines with kernel data in the SSE registers, which then shows up
> when the app touches those SSE registers and you get use space corruption.  My
> code to handle this type of situation was *very* complex, and I don't think I
> ever got it quite perfectly right without simply imposing a rule that the
> kernel could never use both SSE and MMX instructions on the same CPU.
>

I don't see that problem:
* sse_{copy,clear}_page() restore the sse registers before returning.
* the fpu saves into current->thread.i387.f{,x}save never happen from
interrupts.

How can kernel sse values end up in user space? I'm sure I overlook
something, but what?

--
	Manfred
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/