Commit 0007bccc authored Aug 16, 2015 by Len Brown Committed by Thomas Gleixner Nov 25, 2015

x86: Replace RDRAND forced-reseed with simple sanity check



x86_init_rdrand() was added with 2 goals:

1. Sanity check that the built-in-self-test circuit on the Digital
   Random Number Generator (DRNG) is not complaining.  As RDRAND
   HW self-checks on every invocation, this goal is achieved
   by simply invoking RDRAND and checking its return code.

2. Force a full re-seed of the random number generator.
   This was done out of paranoia to benefit the most un-sophisticated
   DRNG implementation conceivable in the architecture,
   an implementation that does not exist, and unlikely ever will.
   This worst-case full-re-seed is achieved by invoking
   a 64-bit RDRAND 8192 times.

Unfortunately, this worst-case re-seed costs O(1,000us).
Magnifying this cost, it is done from identify_cpu(), which is the
synchronous critical path to bring a processor on-line -- repeated
for every logical processor in the system at boot and resume from S3.

As it is very expensive, and of highly dubious value, we delete the
worst-case re-seed from the kernel.

We keep the 1st goal -- sanity check the hardware, and mark it absent
if it complains.

This change reduces the cost of x86_init_rdrand() by a factor of 1,000x,
to O(1us) from O(1,000us).

Signed-off-by: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/058618cc56ec6611171427ad7205e37e377aa8d4.1439738240.git.len.brown@intel.com


Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>

parent 679bcea8

arch/x86/kernel/cpu/rdrand.c

+12 −13

Original line number	Original line	Diff line number	Diff line
	@@ -33,28 +33,27 @@ static int __init x86_rdrand_setup(char *s)
	__setup("nordrand", x86_rdrand_setup);		__setup("nordrand", x86_rdrand_setup);

	/*		/*
	* Force a reseed cycle; we are architecturally guaranteed a reseed		* RDRAND has Built-In-Self-Test (BIST) that runs on every invocation.
	* after no more than 512 128-bit chunks of random data. This also		* Run the instruction a few times as a sanity check.
	* acts as a test of the CPU capability.		* If it fails, it is simple to disable RDRAND here.
	*/		*/
	#define RESEED_LOOP ((512*128)/sizeof(unsigned long))		#define SANITY_CHECK_LOOPS 8

	void x86_init_rdrand(struct cpuinfo_x86 *c)		void x86_init_rdrand(struct cpuinfo_x86 *c)
	{		{
	#ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM		#ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_RANDOM
	unsigned long tmp;		unsigned long tmp;
	int i, count, ok;		int i;

	if (!cpu_has(c, X86_FEATURE_RDRAND))		if (!cpu_has(c, X86_FEATURE_RDRAND))
	return; /* Nothing to do */		return;

	for (count = i = 0; i < RESEED_LOOP; i++) {		for (i = 0; i < SANITY_CHECK_LOOPS; i++) {
	ok = rdrand_long(&tmp);		if (!rdrand_long(&tmp)) {
	if (ok)
	count++;
	}

	if (count != RESEED_LOOP)
	clear_cpu_cap(c, X86_FEATURE_RDRAND);		clear_cpu_cap(c, X86_FEATURE_RDRAND);
			printk_once(KERN_WARNING "rdrand: disabled\n");
			return;
			}
			}
	#endif		#endif
	}		}