Re: [PATCH v2 16/17] x86/insn: remove pcommit

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Fri Jul 22 2016 - 12:53:01 EST



* Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 7:57 AM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> On Sat, Jul 09, 2016 at 08:25:54PM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> >>> The pcommit instruction is being deprecated in favor of either ADR
> >>> (asynchronous DRAM refresh: flush-on-power-fail) at the platform level, or
> >>> posted-write-queue flush addresses as defined by the ACPI 6.x NFIT (NVDIMM
> >>> Firmware Interface Table).
> >>
> >>> arch/x86/include/asm/cpufeatures.h | 1
> >>> arch/x86/include/asm/special_insns.h | 46 --------------------
> >>> arch/x86/lib/x86-opcode-map.txt | 2 -
> >>> tools/objtool/arch/x86/insn/x86-opcode-map.txt | 2 -
> >>> tools/perf/arch/x86/tests/insn-x86-dat-32.c | 2 -
> >>> tools/perf/arch/x86/tests/insn-x86-dat-64.c | 2 -
> >>> tools/perf/arch/x86/tests/insn-x86-dat-src.c | 4 --
> >>
> >> Just deprecated, or is it completely eradicated, removed from history,
> >> will never ever happen and we'll reissue the opcode for something else?
> >>
> >> Because if its only deprecated then removing it from the instruction
> >> decoders seems wrong, old binaries might still contain the opcode.
> >
> > Eradicated.
> >
> > "The new instructions like CLWB and CLFLUSHOPT will be rolled into the
> > SDM but PCOMMIT will be removed from the Extensions doc and not rolled
> > into the SDM." [1]
> >
> > Existing binaries are already gating their usage on the presence of
> > the cpu id flag, that flag and the instruction opcode are reserved
> > going forward.
> >
> > [1]: https://lists.01.org/pipermail/linux-nvdimm/2016-June/005923.html
>
> x86 maintainers, I have the other patches in this series queued in -next. Please
> ack this one and I'll add it for v4.8-rc1, or otherwise let me know how you want
> to handle this patch.

Since it's just a removal AFAICS that the rest of your series should not depend
on, can you submit it to the x86 tree?

Thanks,

Ingo