Re: The killing of ideal_nops[]

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 03:24:47PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 09:13:24AM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Mar 2021 11:22:48 +0100
> > Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > After this FEATURE_NOPL is unused except for required-features for
> > > x86_64. FEATURE_K8 is only used for PTI and FEATURE_K7 is unused.
> > > 
> > > AFAICT this negatively affects lots of 32bit (DONTCARE) and 32bit on
> > > 64bit CPUs (CARELESS) and early AMD (K8) which is from 2003 and almost
> > > 2 decades old by now (SHRUG).
> > > 
> > > Everything x86_64 since AMD K10 (2007) was using p6_nops.
> > > 
> > > And per FEATURE_NOPL being required for x86_64, all those CPUs can use
> > > p6_nops. So stop caring about NOPs, simplify things and get on with life
> > > :-)
> > 
> > Before ripping out all the ideal_nop logic, I wonder if we should just
> > force the nops you want now (that is, don't change the selected
> > ideal_nops, just "pretend" that the CPU wants p6_nops), and see if anyone
> > complains. After a few releases, if there's no complaints, then we can
> > rip out the ideal_nop logic.
> 
> Nah, just rip the entire thing out. You should be happy about
> deterministic NOPs :-)
> 
> NOP encoding is not something CPUs should differentiate on, that's just
> bollocks.

Also, you seem to have fallen off of IRC. Anyway, weren't you the one
that was complaining x86 was 'special' for having different NOPs the
other day?

Fixed it ;-)