[llvm-dev] Status of Intel JCC Mitigations and Next Steps

Wed Mar 25 13:33:43 PDT 2020

The slightly unexpected bit for me in these responses is the willingness 
to accept layout changes if documented.  Let me lay out some options, 
which of these seem reasonable?

1) Default to automatic padding, provide option to disable, document 
where padding is inserted.

2) Default to not automatically padding, provide option to enable, 
document where padding would be inserted if enabled.

And orthogonality to the above, two interpretations of each:

a) auto padding is allowed to break common idioms (because you enabled 
it explicitly or because you can disable).  If it does, you are expected 
to either simply not use it, or possibly use fine grained directives in 
source.

b) auto padding conservative even when explicitly enabled.  One 
implication of this scheme is that different versions of the assembler 
will almost by definition have to tweak insertion as we find new 
problematic idioms.  This creates both documentation difficulties, and 
user confusion.

So, four choices total.  Which seem reasonable?

Personally, I'd have no problem w/ 2a.  Any of the other variants 
concern me.

Philip

On 3/25/20 1:08 PM, Eric Christopher wrote:
> FWIW I'm with Eli here if you need any more data points.
>
> -eric
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 8:21 PM Eli Friedman via llvm-dev 
> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
>
>     Changing the length of a sequence of assembly instructions will
>     break someone’s code at some point.  The length of a sequence of
>     instructions is known, in general, and people will write code to
>     take advantage of that. For example, I’ve seen assembly code using
>     something like Duff’s device, except that instead of using a jump
>     table, it just computed the destination as “base+n*caselength”. 
>     Given that, I don’t think it’s reasonable to hide this mechanism
>     from user control.
>
>     We definitely should not have any undocumented or unpredictable
>     behavior in the assembler.  The actual instruction bytes matter. 
>     That said, I’m not sure there’s a strong line between “automagic”
>     and “explicit”, as long as the rules are documented.
>
>     -Eli
>
>     *From:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org
>     <mailto:llvm-dev-bounces at lists.llvm.org>> *On Behalf Of *Philip
>     Reames via llvm-dev
>     *Sent:* Tuesday, March 24, 2020 3:55 PM
>     *To:* llvm-dev <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org
>     <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>>
>     *Cc:* Luo, Yuanke <yuanke.luo at intel.com
>     <mailto:yuanke.luo at intel.com>>; Zhang, Annita
>     <annita.zhang at intel.com <mailto:annita.zhang at intel.com>>; Craig
>     Topper <craig.topper at intel.com <mailto:craig.topper at intel.com>>
>     *Subject:* [EXT] [llvm-dev] Status of Intel JCC Mitigations and
>     Next Steps
>
>     TLDR - We have a choice to make about assembler support, and a
>     disagreement about how to move forward.  Community input needed.
>
>     Background
>
>     Intel has a hardware bug in Skylake and later whose mitigation
>     requires padding of branches to avoid performance degradation. 
>     Background here:
>     https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/processors/mitigations-jump-conditional-code-erratum.pdf
>
>     We now have in tree support for alignment of such branches via nop
>     padding, and limited support for padding existing instructions
>     with either prefixes or larger immediate values.  This has
>     survived several days of dedicated testing and appears to be
>     reasonably robust.  The padding support applies both to branch
>     alignment for the mitigation, but also normal align directives.
>
>     The original patches proposed a somewhat different approach than
>     we've ended up taking - primarily because of memory overhead
>     concerns.  However, there was also a deeper disagreement on the
>     original review threads (D70157 and others) which was never
>     settled, and we seem to be at a point where this needs attention. 
>     In short, the question is how assembler support should be handled.
>
>     The Choice
>
>     The problematic use case comes when assembling user provided .s
>     files.  (Instead of the more restricted output of the compiler.) 
>     Our basic choice is do we want to force a new directive syntax
>     (and thus a source code change to use the new feature), or attempt
>     to automatically infer where it's safe to insert padding?
>
>     The options as I see them:
>
>       * Assembler directives w/explicit opt in - In this model,
>         assembler input is assumed to only enable padding in regions
>         where it is safe to do so.
>       * Automagic assembler - In this model, the assembler is
>         responsible for inferring where it is legal to pad without
>         breaking user expectations.
>
>     (I'll stop and disclaim that I'm strongly in favor of the former. 
>     I've tried to describe the pros/cons of each, but my perspective
>     is definitely biased.)
>
>     The difference between the two is a huge amount of complexity, and
>     a very fundamental correctness risk. The basic problem is that
>     assemblers have to handle unconstrained inputs, and IMO, the
>     semantics of assembler as used in practice is so under specified
>     that it's really hard to infer semantics in any useful way.  As a
>     couple of examples, is the fault behavior of an instruction well
>     defined?  Is the label near an instruction used by the signal
>     handler?  Is that data byte just before an instruction actually
>     decoded as part of the instruction?
>
>     The benefit of the later option is that existing assembly files
>     can be used without modification.  This is a huge advantage in
>     terms of ease of mitigation for existing code bases.  It's also
>     the approach the original patch sets for GCC took.
>
>     In the original review thread(s), I had taken the position that we
>     should reject the automagic assembler based on the correctness
>     concerns mentioned.  I had thought the consensus in the review was
>     clearly in that direction as well, but this has recently come up
>     again.  Given that, I wanted to open it to a wider audience.
>
>     Why am I pushing for a decision now?
>
>     There are two major reasons.  First, there have recently been a
>     couple of patches posted and landed (D76176, and D76052) building
>     towards the automagic assembler variant.  And second, I've started
>     getting review comments (https://reviews.llvm.org/D76398#1930383)
>     which block forward progress on generalized padding support
>     assuming the automagic interpretation. Implementing the automatic
>     assembler variant for prefix and immediate padding adds
>     substantial complexity and I would very much like not to bother
>     with if I don't have to.
>
>     Current implementation details
>
>     We have support in the integrated assembler only for autopadding
>     suppression.  This allows a LLVM based compiler to effectively
>     apply padding selectively.  In particular, we've instrumented
>     lowering from MI to MC (X86MCInstLowering.cpp) to selectively
>     disable padding around constructs which are thought to be
>     problematic.  We do not have an agreed upon syntax for this in
>     assembler; the code that got checked in is modeled closely around
>     the last seriously discussed variant (see below).  This support is
>     able to use all of the padding variants: nop, prefix, and immediate.
>
>     We also have limited support in the assembler for not inserting
>     nops between fragments where doing so would break known idioms. 
>     The list of such idioms is, IMO, ad hoc.  This assembler support
>     does not include prefix or immediate padding.
>
>     Philip
>
>     p.s. For those interested, here's roughly what the last round of
>     assembler syntax I remember being discussed looked like.
>
>     .autopadding
>     .noautopadding
>
>     These two directives would respectively enable and disable
>     automatic padding of instructions within the region defined.  It's
>     presumed to be legal to insert nops between instructions, modify
>     encodings, or otherwise adjust offsets of instruction boundaries
>     within the region to achieve target specific desired alignments. 
>     Similarly, it's presumed not to be legal to change relative
>     offsets outside an explicitly enabled region.  (Except for
>     existing cases - e.g. relaxation of branches, etc...)
>
>     The assembler would provide a command line flag which conceptually
>     wrapped the whole file in a pair of enable/disable directives.
>
>     We'd previously discussed a variant with push/pop semantics and
>     more fine grained control over alignment requests, but I believe
>     we decided that was overkill in the end.  (I walked away with that
>     impression based on the integrated assembler work at least.)
>
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