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The Lounge War Stories Linus Torvalds reply about Meltdown and Spectre. Post 303011891 by wisecracker on Thursday 25th of January 2018 05:34:25 AM
Old 01-25-2018
Quote:
Originally Posted by dodona
.. for a only hypothetical problem.
Perhaps, perhaps not; a hardware design problem that goes back decades just to get performance figures to sell their CPUs is more than bad to say the least - especially when the manufacturers knew about it.
Also, it can't be that hypothetical if it has been proven to work. It is the big/gigantic sytems that will be affected by these patches not so much the piffling little stuff like my MacBook Pro. I can handle a performance hit knowing about it now but can the big guns? <- Rhetorical!

But unless one has experience of writing kernels and OSes then one can't possibly know how difficult it is to create patches, (that will inherently give a performance hit just to _correct_ a deliberate manufacturing fault for profit), that will not slow things down too much.
 

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X86_ENERGY_PERF_POLICY(8)				      System Manager's Manual					 X86_ENERGY_PERF_POLICY(8)

NAME
x86_energy_perf_policy - read or write MSR_IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS SYNOPSIS
x86_energy_perf_policy [-c cpu] [-v] -r x86_energy_perf_policy [-c cpu] [-v] 'performance' x86_energy_perf_policy [-c cpu] [-v] 'normal' x86_energy_perf_policy [-c cpu] [-v] 'powersave' x86_energy_perf_policy [-c cpu] [-v] n DESCRIPTION
x86_energy_perf_policy allows software to convey its policy for the relative importance of performance versus energy savings to the proces- sor. The processor uses this information in model-specific ways when it must select trade-offs between performance and energy efficiency. This policy hint does not supersede Processor Performance states (P-states) or CPU Idle power states (C-states), but allows software to have influence where it would otherwise be unable to express a preference. For example, this setting may tell the hardware how aggressively or conservatively to control frequency in the "turbo range" above the explicitly OS-controlled P-state frequency range. It may also tell the hardware how aggressively is should enter the OS requested C- states. Support for this feature is indicated by CPUID.06H.ECX.bit3 per the Intel Architectures Software Developer's Manual. Options -c limits operation to a single CPU. The default is to operate on all CPUs. Note that MSR_IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS is defined per logical processor, but that the initial implementations of the MSR were shared among all processors in each package. -v increases verbosity. By default x86_energy_perf_policy is silent. -r is for "read-only" mode - the unchanged state is read and displayed. performance Set a policy where performance is paramount. The processor will be unwilling to sacrifice any performance for the sake of energy saving. This is the hardware default. normal Set a policy with a normal balance between performance and energy efficiency. The processor will tolerate minor performance compro- mise for potentially significant energy savings. This reasonable default for most desktops and servers. powersave Set a policy where the processor can accept a measurable performance hit to maximize energy efficiency. n Set MSR_IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS to the specified number. The range of valid numbers is 0-15, where 0 is maximum performance and 15 is max- imum energy efficiency. NOTES
x86_energy_perf_policy runs only as root. FILES
/dev/cpu/*/msr SEE ALSO
msr(4) AUTHORS
Written by Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> X86_ENERGY_PERF_POLICY(8)
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