Dave Hansen says that the `wrpkru' is more expensive than `rdpkru'. It has a higher cycle cost and it's also practically a (light) speculation barrier. As an optimisation read the current PKRU value and only write the new one if it is different. Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- arch/x86/include/asm/special_insns.h | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+) diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/special_insns.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/special_insns.h index 27328606ff687..28ffdf0c1add4 100644 --- a/arch/x86/include/asm/special_insns.h +++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/special_insns.h @@ -121,6 +121,12 @@ static inline void __write_pkru_ins(u32 pkru) static inline void __write_pkru(u32 pkru) { + /* + * WRPKRU is relatively expensive compared to RDPKRU. + * Avoid WRPKRU when it would not change the value. + */ + if (pkru == __read_pkru_ins()) + return; __write_pkru_ins(pkru); } -- 2.20.1