PowerPC Memory Protection Keys In For Linux 4.16, Power Has Meltdown Mitigation In 4.15
Memory protection keys provides a means of enforcing page-based protections without the need for modification of page tables when an application changes protection domains. The many commits adding this Power memory protection key support is now staged in their PowerPC -next tree.
Back during the Linux 4.6 days is when Intel added their memory protection keys support to the Linux kernel that is of similar nature to this IBM POWER work. More details on Intel's MPK support within this article. Besides the kernel-side bits, there has also been memory protection key additions to the GCC compiler and Glibc too.
While on the topic of the Linux kernel's support for the POWER architecture with it not being something we cover frequently, IBM did get its initial Meltdown prevention support into the Linux 4.15 kernel. For at least Power7/Power8/Power9, they are preventing the Meltdown vulnerability by flushing the L1-D cache on exit from kernel to user mode and from hypervisor to guest. They wrote in that commit, " At this time we do not know the status of the vulnerability on other CPUs such as the 970 (Apple G5), pasemi CPUs (AmigaOne X1000) or Freescale CPUs. As more information comes to light we can enable this, or other mechanisms on those CPUs." More details on their exposure to Meltdown for POWER CPUs can be found in that aforelinked commit.
The RFI flushing for POWER does have an impact on performance as noted in the code work, but with having no access to POWER hardware here, I am not able to run any tests on the actual impact. For those concerned about the performance degredation, it is possible to disable the flushing albeit at that potential security risk.
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