linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] arch/arm64: Introduce a capability to tell whether 16-bit VMID is available

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Wed, 21 Jul 2021 16:23:17 +0100
From:   Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>
To:     Shameer Kolothum <shameerali.kolothum.thodi@...wei.com>
Cc:     linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, kvmarm@...ts.cs.columbia.edu,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, maz@...nel.org,
        catalin.marinas@....com, james.morse@....com,
        julien.thierry.kdev@...il.com, suzuki.poulose@....com,
        jean-philippe@...aro.org, Alexandru.Elisei@....com,
        linuxarm@...wei.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] arch/arm64: Introduce a capability to tell
 whether 16-bit VMID is available

On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 04:56:04PM +0100, Shameer Kolothum wrote:
> From: Julien Grall <julien.grall@....com>
> 
> At the moment, the function kvm_get_vmid_bits() is looking up for the
> sanitized value of ID_AA64MMFR1_EL1 and extract the information
> regarding the number of VMID bits supported.
> 
> This is fine as the function is mainly used during VMID roll-over. New
> use in a follow-up patch will require the function to be called a every
> context switch so we want the function to be more efficient.
> 
> A new capability is introduced to tell whether 16-bit VMID is
> available.

I don't really buy this rationale. The VMID allocator introduced later on
caches this value in the static 'vmid_bits' variable, and that gets used
on vCPU enter via vmid_gen_match() in the kvm_arm_update_vmid() fastpath.

So I would prefer that we just expose an accessor for that than introduce
a static key and new cpufeature just for kvm_get_vttbr().

Will