Re: [PATCH 6/6] x86/gsseg: use the LKGS instruction if available for load_gs_index()

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Mon Oct 10 2022 - 03:54:02 EST


On Mon, Oct 10, 2022 at 04:32:34AM +0000, Li, Xin3 wrote:
> > > > There are not that many call sites, so using something like this
> > > > (incorporating Peter Z's suggestion for the exception handler) would
> > > > be better from a code readability perspective vs. a tiny increase in code size.
> > >
> > > The existing approach patches the binary code thus we don't need to check it
> > at runtime.
> >
> > static_cpu_has() uses alternatives to patch the branch, so there is no runtime
> > check after early boot.
> >
>
> Sorry, didn't know it, thanks for point it out.
>
> If we prefer static_cpu_has, are you asking to replace all alternative macros with it?

No; the only reason to do it here would be to unconfuse that exception
thing. But even there I'm not convinced.

Yes, Brian's code is much easier to read, but code-gen is quite terrible
(also, my binutils can't seem to decode this -- GNU objdump (GNU
Binutils for Debian) 2.38.90.20220713)