Re: [PATCH 3/4] x86/tsx: Clear CPUID bits when TSX always force aborts

[Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>]

On 11.06.2021 12:03, Borislav Petkov wrote:
>On Wed, Jun 09, 2021 at 02:13:38PM -0700, Pawan Gupta wrote:
>> @@ -114,6 +127,26 @@ void __init tsx_init(void)
>>  			tsx_ctrl_state = TSX_CTRL_ENABLE;
>>  	}
>>
>> +	/*
>> +	 * Hardware will always abort a TSX transaction if both CPUID bits
>> +	 * RTM_ALWAYS_ABORT and TSX_FORCE_ABORT are enumerated.  In this case it
>> +	 * is better not to enumerate CPUID.RTM and CPUID.HLE bits. Clear them
>> +	 * here.
>> +	 */
>> +	if (boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_RTM_ALWAYS_ABORT) &&
>> +	    boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_TSX_FORCE_ABORT)) {
>> +		tsx_ctrl_state = TSX_CTRL_RTM_ALWAYS_ABORT;
>> +		tsx_clear_cpuid();
>> +		setup_clear_cpu_cap(X86_FEATURE_RTM);
>> +		setup_clear_cpu_cap(X86_FEATURE_HLE);
>> +		return;
>> +	}
>
>Why isn't this happening as the first thing on entry in that tsx_init()
>function? IOW, there's no point to noodle through cmdline options etc if
>the hardware will always abort transactions.

Because the next patch is adding tsx=fake cmdline, for that this code
needs to be executed after cmdline parsing. I wanted to avoid the churn
to move this code between patches.

But, I see your comment for 4/4 i.e. tsx=fake may not be needed. It was
added after an internal test failure.

tsx=fake is really for a corner case and if that patch goes away it
would make sense to move the code in question here before cmdline
parsing.

Thanks,
Pawan