Christoph Lameter wrote:

gcc/glibc support a __thread attribute to variables. As far as I can tell
this automatically makes gcc perform the relocation to the current
context using a segment register.

But its a weird ABI http://people.redhat.com/drepper/tls.pdf. After
reading that I agree that we should stay with the cpu ops and forget about
the local and thread stuff in gcc/glibc.

We have discussed this a number of times.  There are several issues with
it; one being that per-cpu != per-thread (we can switch CPU whereever
we're preempted), and another that many versions of gcc uses hardcoded
registers, in particular %fs on 64 bits, but the kernel *has* to use %gs
since there is no swapfs instruction.

	-hpa

-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.