diff options
author | André Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu> | 2016-06-10 05:30:17 -0300 |
---|---|---|
committer | André Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu> | 2016-06-10 05:30:17 -0300 |
commit | d635711daa98be86d4c7fd01499c34f566b54ccb (patch) | |
tree | aa5cc3760a27c3d57146498cb82fa549547de06c /Documentation/x86/protection-keys.txt | |
parent | c91265cd0efb83778f015b4d4b1129bd2cfd075e (diff) |
Linux-libre 4.6.2-gnu
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/x86/protection-keys.txt')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/x86/protection-keys.txt | 27 |
1 files changed, 27 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/x86/protection-keys.txt b/Documentation/x86/protection-keys.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..c281ded1b --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/x86/protection-keys.txt @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +Memory Protection Keys for Userspace (PKU aka PKEYs) is a CPU feature +which will be found on future Intel CPUs. + +Memory Protection Keys provides a mechanism for enforcing page-based +protections, but without requiring modification of the page tables +when an application changes protection domains. It works by +dedicating 4 previously ignored bits in each page table entry to a +"protection key", giving 16 possible keys. + +There is also a new user-accessible register (PKRU) with two separate +bits (Access Disable and Write Disable) for each key. Being a CPU +register, PKRU is inherently thread-local, potentially giving each +thread a different set of protections from every other thread. + +There are two new instructions (RDPKRU/WRPKRU) for reading and writing +to the new register. The feature is only available in 64-bit mode, +even though there is theoretically space in the PAE PTEs. These +permissions are enforced on data access only and have no effect on +instruction fetches. + +=========================== Config Option =========================== + +This config option adds approximately 1.5kb of text. and 50 bytes of +data to the executable. A workload which does large O_DIRECT reads +of holes in XFS files was run to exercise get_user_pages_fast(). No +performance delta was observed with the config option +enabled or disabled. |