Re: [PATCH 4/7] x86/umwait_contro: Set global umwait maximum time limit and umwait C0.2 state

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2018, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On 07/23/2018 05:55 AM, Fenghua Yu wrote:
> > UMWAIT or TPAUSE called by user process makes processor to reside in
> > a light-weight power/performance optimized state (C0.1 state) or an
> > improved power/performance optimized state (C0.2 state).
> > 
> > IA32_UMWAIT_CONTROL MSR register allows OS to set global maximum umwait
> > time and disable C0.2 on the processor.
> > 
> > The maximum time value in IA32_UMWAIT_CONTROL[31-2] is set as zero which
> > means there is no global time limit for UMWAIT and TPAUSE instructions.
> > Each process sets its own umwait maximum time as the instructions operand.
> > We don't set a non-zero global umwait maximum time value to enforce user
> > wait timeout because we couldn't find any usage for it.
> 
> Do you know what the instruction designers had in mind?  I assume they were
> thinking of *something*, but I'm seriously mystified by three things:
> 
>  - Why does CF work the way it does?  It seems like it would be genuinely
> useful for CF to indicate whether the in-register timeout has expired, but
> that's not what CF does.

Right, it would be useful to see whether the timeout caused the exit or
something else.

Thanks,

	tglx