linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH v2 1/4] rseq: Add sched

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]

Message-ID: <20230928103926.GI9829@noisy.programming.kicks-ass.net>
Date:   Thu, 28 Sep 2023 12:39:26 +0200
From:   Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
To:     Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com>
Cc:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        "Paul E . McKenney" <paulmck@...nel.org>,
        Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@...il.com>,
        "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Paul Turner <pjt@...gle.com>,
        linux-api@...r.kernel.org, Christian Brauner <brauner@...nel.org>,
        Florian Weimer <fw@...eb.enyo.de>, David.Laight@...lab.com,
        carlos@...hat.com, Peter Oskolkov <posk@...k.io>,
        Alexander Mikhalitsyn <alexander@...alicyn.com>,
        Chris Kennelly <ckennelly@...gle.com>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Darren Hart <dvhart@...radead.org>,
        Davidlohr Bueso <dave@...olabs.net>,
        André Almeida <andrealmeid@...lia.com>,
        libc-alpha@...rceware.org, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Noah Goldstein <goldstein.w.n@...il.com>,
        Daniel Colascione <dancol@...gle.com>, longman@...hat.com,
        Florian Weimer <fweimer@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v2 1/4] rseq: Add sched_state field to struct rseq

On Mon, May 29, 2023 at 03:14:13PM -0400, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> Expose the "on-cpu" state for each thread through struct rseq to allow
> adaptative mutexes to decide more accurately between busy-waiting and
> calling sys_futex() to release the CPU, based on the on-cpu state of the
> mutex owner.
> 
> It is only provided as an optimization hint, because there is no
> guarantee that the page containing this field is in the page cache, and
> therefore the scheduler may very well fail to clear the on-cpu state on
> preemption. This is expected to be rare though, and is resolved as soon
> as the task returns to user-space.
> 
> The goal is to improve use-cases where the duration of the critical
> sections for a given lock follows a multi-modal distribution, preventing
> statistical guesses from doing a good job at choosing between busy-wait
> and futex wait behavior.

As always, are syscalls really *that* expensive? Why can't we busy wait
in the kernel instead?

I mean, sure, meltdown sucked, but most people should now be running
chips that are not affected by that particular horror show, no?