Re: [PATCH] Add a text_poke syscall v2

H. Peter Anvin
2013-11-27T23:21:04Z

On 11/27/2013 03:10 PM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 02:40:04PM -0800, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>> Also don't forget we need the IPIs, too...
>
> Yeah, I was simply looking at whether we could get away with executing
> an empty syscall, i.e. save us the CPUID and rely only on the IPIs and
> IRET.
>
> But we don't IPI ourselves in smp_call_function; actually we remove
> ourselves from the cpumask because of deadlocking scenarios. So on
> this_cpu we only execute the function with IRQs disabled and CLI/STI is
> not serializing.
>

Although as Linus correctly pointed out, on the modifying CPU itself we
only need a branch. For the standalone system call that doesn't work,
because you can't assume that the modifying CPU and the syscall CPU are
the same CPU.

> I wonder if we could use MFENCE instead of CPUID, though, and save us
> the clobbering of e*x, maybe even save us some cycles since MFENCE
> should be faster than hundred-ish cycles of microcoded CPUID.
>

No. MFENCE doesn't serialize the front end.

-hpa