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Global pages are bad for hardening because they potentially let an
exploit read the kernel image via a Meltdown-style attack which
makes it easier to find gadgets.
But, global pages are good for performance because they reduce TLB
misses when making user/kernel transitions, especially when PCIDs
are not available, such as on older hardware, or where a hypervisor
has disabled them for some reason.
This patch implements a basic, sane policy: If you have PCIDs, you
only map a minimal amount of kernel text global. If you do not have
PCIDs, you map all kernel text global.
This policy effectively makes PCIDs something that not only adds
performance but a little bit of hardening as well.
I ran a simple "lseek" microbenchmark[1] to test the benefit on
a modern Atom microserver. Most of the benefit comes from applying
the series before this patch ("entry only"), but there is still a
signifiant benefit from this patch.
No Global Lines (baseline ): 6077741 lseeks/sec
88 Global Lines (entry only): 7528609 lseeks/sec (+23.9%)
94 Global Lines (this patch): 8433111 lseeks/sec (+38.8%)
[1.] https://github.com/antonblanchard/will-it-scale/blob/master/tests/lseek1.c
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <[email protected]>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <[email protected]>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <[email protected]>
Cc: Arjan van de Ven <[email protected]>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <[email protected]>
Cc: Dan Williams <[email protected]>
Cc: David Woodhouse <[email protected]>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <[email protected]>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <[email protected]>
Cc: Juergen Gross <[email protected]>
Cc: Kees Cook <[email protected]>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
Cc: Nadav Amit <[email protected]>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <[email protected]>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <[email protected]>
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