Re: [PATCH v5 11/11] intel_sgx: driver documentation

Sean Christopherson
2017-11-27T17:07:57Z

On Tue, 2017-11-21 at 01:08 +0200, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 12:34:33AM +0100, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> >
> > This is architecural. From the cursory read of that series it seems there
> > are two parts to it:
> >
> >   1) The actual core handling, which should be in arch/x86 because that
> >      hardly qualifies as a 'platform' device driver.
> >
> >   2) The user space interface, which can be separated out perhaps.
> >
> > I don't know how intertwingled they are, but that's hard to tell from the
> > actual patches w/o doing a deep inspection. Jarkko should be able to answer
> > that.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > tglx
> Darren, tglx,
>
> You can leave user space device as separate module as sgx_ioctl.c merely
> calls stuff that I have inside sgx_encl.c. VMA creation is bound to file
> operations.
>
> My questions would be:
>
> 1. What is your recommendation on the deployment under arch/x86?
> 2. Which parts should be compilable as a LKM? Only the user interface
>    or both parts?
>
> /Jarkko

To enable KVM and a cgroup for EPC accounting, at a minimum arch/x86 needs to
manage the EPC pages (alloc/free/lrus/reclaim/etc...) and LE hash MSRs.  IMO,
ideally everything else would be left in the device driver, e.g. anything
involving ENCLS.  Keeping the majority of the driver out of arch/x86 minimizes
the footprint in arch/x86 and thereby the size of KVM's dependency required to
virtualize SGX, and allows the various SGX pieces, e.g. arch, driver and KVM, to
evolve more independently.

Preferably the arch/x86 code would not be a loadable module, e.g. to simplify
KVM support.

I have a branch based on Jarkko's patches (I believe it's up-to-date with v5)
that implements what I described.  I'd be happy to send RFC patches if that
would help.

Branches for those interested:

https://github.com/sean-jc/linux.git sgx/arch   - move core EPC to arch/x86
https://github.com/sean-jc/linux.git sgx/kvm    - KVM support for SGX
https://github.com/sean-jc/linux.git sgx/lc     - KVM support for Launch Control
https://github.com/sean-jc/linux.git sgx/cgroup - EPC cgroup

branch relationships:

Jarkko's patches
|
|
sgx/arch
/        \
sgx/kvm    sgx/cgroup
/
sgx/lc