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Commit 69f5f983 authored by Borislav Petkov's avatar Borislav Petkov Committed by Thomas Gleixner
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x86/microcode/AMD: Remove AP scanning optimization



The idea was to not scan the microcode blob on each AP (Application
Processor) during boot and thus save us some milliseconds. However, on
architectures where the microcode engine is shared between threads, this
doesn't work. Here's why:

The microcode on CPU0, i.e., the first thread, gets updated. The second
thread, i.e., CPU1, i.e., the first AP walks into load_ucode_amd_ap(),
sees that there's no container cached and goes and scans for the proper
blob.

It finds it and as a last step of apply_microcode_early_amd(), it tries
to apply the patch but that core has already the updated microcode
revision which it has received through CPU0's update. So it returns
false and we do desc->size = -1 to prevent other APs from scanning.

However, the next AP, CPU2, has a different microcode engine which
hasn't been updated yet. The desc->size == -1 test prevents it from
scanning the blob anew and we fail to update it.

The fix is much more straight-forward than it looks: the BSP
(BootStrapping Processor), i.e., CPU0, caches the microcode patch
in amd_ucode_patch. We use that on the AP and try to apply it.
In the 99.9999% of cases where we have homogeneous cores - *not*
mixed-steppings - the application will be successful and we're good to
go.

In the remaining small set of systems, we will simply rescan the blob
and find (or not, if none present) the proper patch and apply it then.

Signed-off-by: default avatarBorislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: default avatarThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170120202955.4091-16-bp@alien8.de
Signed-off-by: default avatarThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
parent 72edfe95
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