KFence Memory Safety Error Checking Is Looking Good For Minimal Overhead On Linux 5.12

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KFence Memory Safety Error Checking Is Looking Good For Minimal Overhead On Linux 5.12

Of the many new features coming with Linux 5.12 is KFence, short for the Kernel Electric Fence. KFence is a low-overhead memory safety error detector/validator for the kernel with lower expected overhead costs than say the Kernel Address Sanitizer. I just wrapped up some benchmarks looking out for any overhead impact of KFence on Linux 5.12 in its near-final state...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.12-KFence-Benchmark

[hoohoo]

Michael, I just wanted to say that your circular relative performance graph is brilliant. Much easier to interpret than a forest of bar charts.

[Charlie68]

Michael "

So at least from this quick testing, it jives with what the developers report in that running with KFence enabled should have near-zero overhead costs.

"
However the openSUSE devs are disabling it, due to various issues their openQA has revealed.

https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1185565