Commits
Dave Hansen committed 381aa07a9b4
x86: Introduce disabled-features I believe the REQUIRED_MASK aproach was taken so that it was easier to consult in assembly (arch/x86/kernel/verify_cpu.S). DISABLED_MASK does not have the same restriction, but I implemented it the same way for consistency. We have a REQUIRED_MASK... which does two things: 1. Keeps a list of cpuid bits to check in very early boot and refuse to boot if those are not present. 2. Consulted during cpu_has() checks, which allows us to optimize out things at compile-time. In other words, if we *KNOW* we will not boot with the feature off, then we can safely assume that it will be present forever. But, we don't have a similar mechanism for CPU features which may be present but that we know we will not use. We simply use our existing mechanisms to repeatedly check the status of the bit at runtime (well, the alternatives patching helps here but it does not provide compile-time optimization). Adding a feature to disabled-features.h allows the bit to be checked via a new macro: cpu_feature_enabled(). Note that for features in DISABLED_MASK, checks with this macro have all of the benefits of an #ifdef. Before, we would have done this in a header: #ifdef CONFIG_X86_INTEL_MPX #define cpu_has_mpx cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_MPX) #else #define cpu_has_mpx 0 #endif and this in the code: if (cpu_has_mpx) do_some_mpx_thing(); Now, just add your feature to DISABLED_MASK and you can do this everywhere, and get the same benefits you would have from #ifdefs: if (cpu_feature_enabled(X86_FEATURE_MPX)) do_some_mpx_thing(); We need a new function and *not* a modification to cpu_has() because there are cases where we actually need to check the CPU itself, despite what features the kernel supports. The best example of this is a hypervisor which has no control over what features its guests are using and where the guest does not depend on the host for support. Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20140911211513.9E35E931@viggo.jf.intel.com Acked-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de> Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@linux.intel.com>