linux-kernel - [PATCH] x86/amd: disable way access filter on affected CPUs

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Date:	Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:20:50 +0100
From:	Andre Przywara <osp@...rep.de>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
Cc:	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Andreas Herrmann <herrmann.der.user@...glemail.com>,
	osp@...rep.de
Subject: [PATCH] x86/amd: disable way access filter on affected CPUs

From: Andre Przywara <andre.przywara@....com>

The Way Access Filter in recent AMD CPUs may hurt the performance of
some workloads, caused by aliasing issues in the L1 cache.
This patch disables it on the affected CPUs.

The issue is similar to that one of last year:
http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1107.3/00041.html
This new patch does not replace the old one, we just need another
quirk for newer CPUs.

The performance penalty without the patch depends on the
circumstances, but is a bit less than the last year's 3%.

The workloads affected would be those that access code from the same
physical page under different virtual addresses, so different
processes using the same libraries with ASLR or multiple instances of
PIE-binaries. The code needs to be accessed simultaneously from both
cores of the same compute unit.

More details can be found here:
http://developer.amd.com/Assets/SharedL1InstructionCacheonAMD15hCPU.pdf

CPUs affected are anything with the core known as Piledriver.
That includes the new parts of the AMD A-Series (aka Trinity) and the
just released new CPUs of the FX-Series (aka Vishera).
The model numbering is a bit odd here: FX CPUs have model 2,
A-Series has model 10h, with possible extensions to 1Fh. Hence the
range of model ids.

Signed-off-by: Andre Przywara <osp@...rep.de>
---
 arch/x86/kernel/cpu/amd.c |   14 ++++++++++++++
 1 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/amd.c b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/amd.c
index f7e98a2..1b7d165 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/amd.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/amd.c
@@ -631,6 +631,20 @@ static void __cpuinit init_amd(struct cpuinfo_x86 *c)
 		}
 	}

+	/*
+	 * The way access filter has a performance penalty on some workloads.
+	 * Disable it on the affected CPUs.
+	 */
+	if ((c->x86 == 0x15) &&
+	    (c->x86_model >= 0x02) && (c->x86_model < 0x20)) {
+		u64 val;
+
+		if (!rdmsrl_safe(0xc0011021, &val) && !(val & 0x1E)) {
+			val |= 0x1E;
+			wrmsrl_safe(0xc0011021, val);
+		}
+	}
+
 	cpu_detect_cache_sizes(c);

 	/* Multi core CPU? */
-- 
1.7.1

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