RE: [PATCH] x86/memcpy: Introduce memcpy_mcsafe_fast

From: Luck, Tony
Date: Mon Apr 20 2020 - 16:45:36 EST


> By "asynchronous" I don't mean "hours later".
>
> Make it be "interrupts are enabled, before serializing instruction".
>
> Yes, we want bounded error handling latency. But that doesn't mean "synchronous"

Another X86 vendor seems to be adding something like that. See MCOMMIT
in https://www.amd.com/system/files/TechDocs/24594.pdf

But I wonder how an OS will know whether it is running some smart
MCOMMIT-aware application that can figure out what to do with bad
data, or a legacy application that should probably be stopped before
it hurts somebody.

I also wonder how expensive MCOMMIT is (since it is essentially
polling for "did any errors happen").

-Tony