linux-kernel - [PATCH 00/11 v3] x86: load FPU registers on return to userland

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Message-Id: <20181004140547.13014-1-bigeasy@linutronix.de>
Date:   Thu,  4 Oct 2018 16:05:36 +0200
From:   Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@...utronix.de>
To:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     x86@...nel.org, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
        Radim Krčmář <rkrcmar@...hat.com>,
        kvm@...r.kernel.org, "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@...c4.com>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>
Subject: [PATCH 00/11 v3] x86: load FPU registers on return to userland

This is a refurbished series originally started by by Rik van Riel. The
goal is load the FPU registers on return to userland and not on every
context switch. By this optimisation we can:
- avoid loading the registers if the task stays in kernel and does
  not return to userland
- make kernel_fpu_begin() cheaper: it only saves the registers on the
  first invocation. The second invocation does not need save them again.

To access the FPU registers in kernel we need:
- disable preemption to avoid that the scheduler switches tasks. By
  doing so it would set TIF_LOAD_FPU and the FPU registers would be not
  valid.
- disable BH because the softirq might use kernel_fpu_begin() and then
  set TIF_LOAD_FPU instead loading the FPU registers on completion.

v1…v3:
v2 was never posted. I followed the idea to completely decouple PKRU
from xstate. This didn't quite work and made a few things complicated. 
One obvious required fixup is copy_fpstate_to_sigframe() where the PKRU
state needs to be fiddled into xstate. This required another
xfeatures_mask so that the sanity checks were performed and
xstate_offsets would be computed. Additionally ptrace also reads/sets
xstate in order to get/set the register and PKRU is one of them. So this
would need some fiddle, too.
In v3 I dropped that decouple idea. I also learned that the wrpkru
instruction is not privileged and so caching it in kernel does not work.
Instead I keep PKRU in xstate area and load it at context switch time
while the remaining registers are deferred (until return to userland).
The offset of PKRU within xstate is enumerated at boot time so why not
use it.

This seems to work with my in-kernel test case and a userland test case
which use xmm registers. The pkey feature was tested in non kvm
accelerated qemu and it seems to work, too.

Sebastian