Re: [crash, bisected] Re: [PATCH 3/4] x86_64: Fold pda into per cpuarea
From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge
Date: Tue Jul 01 2008 - 17:53:08 EST
Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Nope. It achieves that affect with a magic set of relocations instead
of linker magic.
Well, the code gcc generates for -fstack-protector emits a literal
"%gs:40", so there's no relocations at all.
At present, the x86-64 only uses %gs-relative addressing to reach the pda, which
are always small positive offsets. It always accesses per-cpu data in a
two-step process of getting the base of per-cpu data, then offsetting to find
the particular variable.
x86-32 has no pda, and arranges %fs so that %fs:variable gets the percpu variant
of variable. The offsets are always quite large.
As a practical matter I like that approach (except for extra code size
of the offsets).
Yes, and there's no reason we couldn't do the same on 64-bit, aside from
the stack-protector's use of %gs:40. There's no code-size cost in large
offsets, since they're always 32-bits anyway (there's no short absolute
addressing mode).
The powerpc guys tried using gcc-level thread-local storage, but it doesn't work
well. per-cpu data and per-thread data have different constraints, and its hard
to tell gcc about them. For example, if you have a section of preemptable code
in your function, it's hard to tell gcc not to cache a "thread-local" variable
across it, even though we could have switched CPUs in the meantime.
Yes, I completely agree with that. It doesn't mean however that we
can't keep gcc ignorant and generate the same code manually.
Yes, I see. I haven't looked at that specifically, but I think both
Rusty and Andi have, and it gets tricky with modules and -ve kernel
addresses, or something.
Well I was thinking threads switching on a cpu having the kinds of problems you
described when it was tried on ppc.
Uh, I think we're having a nomenclature imprecision here. Strictly
speaking, the kernel doesn't have threads, only tasks and CPUs. We only
care about per-cpu data, not per-task data, so the concern is not
"threads switching on a CPU" but "CPUs switching on (under) a task".
But I think we understand each other regardless ;)
If we manually generate %gs-relative references to percpu data, then
it's no different to what we do with 32-bit, whether it be a specific
symbol address or using the TLS relocations.
J
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/