linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 00/12] [RFC] x86: Memory Protection Keys

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Message-ID: <554BC0CE.6070900@de.ibm.com>
Date:	Thu, 07 May 2015 21:45:18 +0200
From:	Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@...ibm.com>
To:	Dave Hansen <dave@...1.net>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
CC:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, x86@...nel.org,
	linux-s390 <linux-s390@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/12] [RFC] x86: Memory Protection Keys

Am 07.05.2015 um 21:29 schrieb Dave Hansen:
> On 05/07/2015 12:22 PM, Christian Borntraeger wrote:
>> Am 07.05.2015 um 20:09 schrieb Dave Hansen:
>>> On 05/07/2015 10:57 AM, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>>>>>> There are two new instructions (RDPKRU/WRPKRU) for reading and 
>>>>>> writing to the new register.  The feature is only available in 
>>>>>> 64-bit mode, even though there is theoretically space in the PAE 
>>>>>> PTEs.  These permissions are enforced on data access only and have 
>>>>>> no effect on instruction fetches.
>>>> So I'm wondering what the primary usecases are for this feature?
>>>> Could you outline applications/workloads/libraries that would
>>>> benefit from this?
>>>
>>> There are lots of things that folks would _like_ to mprotect(), but end
>>> up not being feasible because of the overhead of going and mucking with
>>> thousands of PTEs and shooting down remote TLBs every time you want to
>>> change protections.
>>
>> These protection bits would need to be cached in TLBs as well, no?
> 
> Yes, they are cached in the TLBs.  It's actually explicitly called out
> in the documentation.
> 
>> So the saving would come by switching the PKRU instead of the page bits.
> 
> Right.
> 
>> This all looks like s390 storage keys (with the key in pagetables instead
>> of a dedicated place). There we also have 16 values for the key and 4 bits 
>> in the PSW that describe the thread local key both are matched.
>> There is an additional field F (fetch protection) that decides, if the
>> key value is used for stores or for stores+fetches.
> 
> OK, so a thread can only be in one domain at a time?

Via the PSW yes.
Actually the docs talk about access key, which is usually the PSW. There are
some instructions like MOVE WITH KEY that allow to specify the key for this
specific instruction. For compiled code these insructions are not used in 
Linux and I can not really see a way to implement that properly. Furthermore
enabling these key ops has other implications which are unwanted.

 
> That's a bit different than x86 where each page can be in one protection
> domain, but each CPU thread can independently enable/disable access to
> each of the 16 protection domains.
> 

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