mbox

[00/16] memory tagging improvements

Message ID cover.1614874816.git.szabolcs.nagy@arm.com
Headers

Message

Szabolcs Nagy March 4, 2021, 4:30 p.m. UTC 
  This set tries to reduce the overhead of memory tagging support: when
glibc is built with --enable-memory-tagging there are runtime checks
that affect performance even if heap tagging is not enabled at runtime.

I refactored the code to reduce internal abstractions and ifdefs. And
a number of patches optimize heap tagging on aarch64 with MTE.

Also available in the nsz/mtag branch.

Issues found and fixed:
- realloc failed to untag the old memory in some cases.
- incorrect but useless macro definition in public sys/prctl.h.
- incorrect but harmless internal MTAG_MMAP_FLAGS declaration.

Issues found but not fixed:
- large granule is not supported: both chunk header and user allocation
  must be tag granule aligned, but the code assumes that the chunk
  header is 2*SIZE_SZ so larger granule is not supported.
- request2size and checked_request2size are not consistent which looks
  wrong (likely works in practice other than some sizes don't end up in
  fastbin or tcache that one might expected to, but i think this can
  break easily). Fixing it is not obvious because of assumptions about
  the chunk layout that is no longer true with mtag enabled.

Other possible optimizations:
- ifunc malloc apis
  good: near zero overhead for runtime dispatch.
  bad: malloc has to be built twice or larger refactoring is needed.
- unconditional top byte zero
  internal data is tagged 0, only user allocation is tagged non-zero
  (we rely on this e.g. where MADV_DONTNEED is used: then the kernel
  zeros the tags so with non-zero tags internal pointers would not be
  able to access recycled memory), so tag_at(p) for internal data
  could be unconditional top byte clear.
  good: faster than the branch in tag_at, may improve security (?).
  bad: design change.
- unconditional layout
  padding up to tag granule can be done unconditionally
  good: no runtime check, same layout with and without heap tagging.
  bad: wasting space with small allocations, design change.

This patchset tried to avoid intrusive changes that affect behaviour.

Benchmarked using bench-malloc-thread glibc ubenchmark on Neoverse N1.
For size=16 the runtime check overhead is
  ~ 32% before the patch set
  ~ 16% after the patch set.
On a practical workload or for large sizes the overhead should be tiny.

Szabolcs Nagy (16):
  malloc: Fix a realloc crash with heap tagging [BZ 27468]
  Remove PR_TAGGED_ADDR_ENABLE from sys/prctl.h
  malloc: Move MTAG_MMAP_FLAGS definition
  malloc: Simplify __mtag_tag_new_usable
  malloc: Avoid taggig mmaped memory on free
  malloc: Ensure the generic mtag hooks are not used
  malloc: Refactor TAG_ macros to avoid indirection
  malloc: Use global flag instead of function pointer dispatch for mtag
  malloc: Only support zeroing and not arbitrary memset with mtag
  malloc: Change calloc when tagging is disabled
  malloc: Use branches instead of mtag_granule_mask
  malloc: Use mtag_enabled instead of USE_MTAG
  aarch64: inline __libc_mtag_address_get_tag
  aarch64: inline __libc_mtag_new_tag
  aarch64: Optimize __libc_mtag_tag_region
  aarch64: Optimize __libc_mtag_tag_zero_region

 include/malloc.h                         |   7 -
 malloc/arena.c                           |  45 +-----
 malloc/hooks.c                           |  20 ++-
 malloc/malloc.c                          | 177 ++++++++++++-----------
 sysdeps/aarch64/Makefile                 |   4 +-
 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_address_get_tag.S |  32 ----
 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_memset_tag.S      |  53 -------
 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_new_tag.S         |  37 -----
 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_tag_region.S      |  98 ++++++++++---
 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_tag_zero_region.S | 113 +++++++++++++++
 sysdeps/aarch64/libc-mtag.h              |  32 ++--
 sysdeps/generic/libc-mtag.h              |  43 ++++--
 sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/sys/prctl.h      |   4 -
 13 files changed, 353 insertions(+), 312 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_address_get_tag.S
 delete mode 100644 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_memset_tag.S
 delete mode 100644 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_new_tag.S
 create mode 100644 sysdeps/aarch64/__mtag_tag_zero_region.S