Re: Immediate values

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>]

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:19:32 -0700
"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:

> Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > On Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:02:06 +0100
> > Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> > 
> >>> Then, following your advice, kprobes should be re-designed to do a
> >>> stop_machine around the int3 breakpoint insertion ? And gdb
> >>> should be stopping all threads of a target process before
> >>> inserting a breakpoint. Therefore, I do not seem to be the only
> >>> one confused about Intel statement on this issue.
> >> There was considerable discussion abut this when the kprobe stuff
> >> went in. If I remember rightly it was stated by someone @intel.com
> >> then that int3 was ok (even though its not strictly documented as
> >> such). The same is not true for all instructions on all x86
> >> processors unfortunately.
> > 
> > specifically, using int3 *and then going back to the old value*.
> > 
> 
> As I told Mathieu in person yesterday:
> 
> 1. We have no information if this is safe or not.  It is most
> certainly not documented as safe, and trying to play language lawyer
> with the errata text is pointless, as it's trying to interpret
> something that isn't there.
> 
> 2. There are some reasons to believe there might be a safe technique 
> somewhere in here (the one he described is a possibility, but not the 
> only one.)
> 
> 3. Being able to patch code without stopping all cores has other
> uses, and so spending some time doing legwork on it is probably worth
> it.
> 
> 4. "Someone at Intel" isn't a reference... we need to track down
> actual CPU architects with real names who can give us a thumbs up or
> down.

and we need to talk to about 5 or so generations at least.
We know whom to talk to, it just will take time
(and first indication is frowned faces)

AMD will also do the same, and VIA (I think they have dual core/smp as
well)

-- 
Arjan van de Ven 	Intel Open Source Technology Centre
For development, discussion and tips for power savings, 
visit http://www.lesswatts.org