[PATCH v2 1/6] arm: Add BTB invalidation on switch_mm for Cortex-A9, A12 and A17

[Tony Lindgren]

* Marc Zyngier <marc.zyngier at arm.com> [180108 19:00]:
> In order to avoid aliasing attacks against the branch predictor,
> some implementations require to invalidate the BTB when switching
> from one user context to another.
> 
> For this, we reuse the existing implementation for Cortex-A8, and
> apply it to A9, A12 and A17.

I suspect we now must also make sure Cortex-A8 has the IBE bit
set unconditionally for this to work. Currently the assumption is
that IBE bit needs to be set only on the earlier CPU revisions
that suffer from ARM_ERRATA_430973.

> --- a/arch/arm/mm/proc-v7-2level.S
> +++ b/arch/arm/mm/proc-v7-2level.S
> @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
>   *	even on Cortex-A8 revisions not affected by 430973.
>   *	If IBE is not set, the flush BTAC/BTB won't do anything.
>   */
> -ENTRY(cpu_ca8_switch_mm)
> +ENTRY(cpu_v7_btbinv_switch_mm)
>  #ifdef CONFIG_MMU
>  	mov	r2, #0
>  	mcr	p15, 0, r2, c7, c5, 6		@ flush BTAC/BTB

So without IBE set, as the comments above say, the flush won't
do anything.

Regards,

Tony