On Mon, 18 Oct 2021, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:

The load-multiple instruction that essentially performs the switch_to
operation in ARM mode, by loading all callee save registers as well the
stack pointer and the program counter, is split into 3 separate loads
for Thumb-2, with the IP register used as a temporary to capture the
value of R4 before it gets overwritten.

We can clean this up a bit, by sticking with a single LDMIA instruction,
but one that pops SP and PC into IP and LR, respectively, and by using
ordinary move register and branch instructions to get those values into
SP and PC. This also allows us to move the set_current call closer to
the assignment of SP, reducing the window where those are mutually out
of sync. This is especially relevant for CONFIG_VMAP_STACK, which is
being introduced in a subsequent patch, where we need to issue a load
that might fault from the new stack while running from the old one, to
ensure that stale PMD entries in the VMALLOC space are synced up.

What could happen if they are of sync? The window is small but still.


Nicolas

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