linux-kernel - Re: STIBP by default.. Revert?

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Message-ID: <20181119083855.GA129733@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon, 19 Nov 2018 09:38:55 +0100
From:   Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Jiri Kosina <jkosina@...e.cz>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        David Woodhouse <dwmw@...zon.co.uk>,
        Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>,
        Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@...ux.intel.com>,
        Casey Schaufler <casey.schaufler@...el.com>,
        Linux List Kernel Mailing <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>,
        stable@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: STIBP by default.. Revert?


* Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:

> This was marked for stable, and honestly, nowhere in the discussion
> did I see any mention of just *how* bad the performance impact of this
> was.

Yeah. This was an oversight - we'll fix it!

> When performance goes down by 50% on some loads, people need to start
> asking themselves whether it was worth it. It's apparently better to
> just disable SMT entirely, which is what security-conscious people do
> anyway.
> 
> So why do that STIBP slow-down by default when the people who *really*
> care already disabled SMT?
> 
> I think we should use the same logic as for L1TF: we default to
> something that doesn't kill performance. Warn once about it, and let
> the  crazy people say "I'd rather take a 50% performance hit than
> worry about a theoretical issue".

Yeah, absolutely.

We'll also require performance measurements in changelogs enabling any 
sort of mitigation feature from now on - this requirement was implicit 
but 53c613fe6349 flew in under the radar, so it's going to be explicit an 
explicit requirement.

Thanks,

	Ingo