Re: memcmp-sse4.S EqualHappy bug

[Rich Felker <dalias at libc dot org>]

On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 08:05:17PM +0200, OndÅej BÃlka wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 05:54:42PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 10:19:58PM +0200, OndÅej BÃlka wrote:
> > I fully understand your arguments about the standard and I expected
> > this behavior was permitted.
> > 
> > I'm also pointing out we go a bit beyond in what we pretend from C
> > with the READ_ONCE/WRITE_ONCE/volatile/asm("memory") to provide RCU
> > (and to implement the spinlock/mutex). I just wanted to express my
> > views on the practical aspects and how we could enforce that if a part
> > of memory (a part that is separated by atomic granularity of the arch,
> > a variable you need to know and isn't 1 byte minimum on alpha for
> > example) the memcmp is well defined that can't return 0 (i.e. if it
> > returns 0 it actually read all bytes of "length" parameter and at some
> > point in time each byte individually was always equal, and the last
> > part of the page is never changed and never equal).
> > 
> > I'm fine if no change is done, and it'd be great if at least the
> > manpage of memcmp/bcmp is updated. If it was up to me though I'd
> > prefer to fix this case so 0 isn't happily returned too soon
> > unexpectedly, as the unrolled loop fast path won't require change.
> 
> I see now. As I am writing new memcmp I don't see that likely, as it
> adds extra overhead thats hard to justify.
> 
> Rereading is needed for good performance, a loop checks 64 bytes at
> once and sse2 uses destructive operation so original data wont be there.
> 
> A best workaround would be add after final subtraction check if its zero
> then call 
> memcmp(x+found+1, y+found+1, remaining)
> 
> That could be almost free as you need to just add je branch after
> subtraction.

I would much rather see that je branch to a HCF instruction. If you've
detected UB then you should not hide it but make it crash immediately.

Rich