[PULL 01/31] include/qemu/compiler: add QEMU_UNINITIALIZED attribute macro

Maintainers: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com>, Hanna Reitz <hreitz@redhat.com>, "Marc-André Lureau" <marcandre.lureau@redhat.com>, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>, Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com>, Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>, Halil Pasic <pasic@linux.ibm.com>, Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@linux.ibm.com>, Dmitry Fleytman <dmitry.fleytman@gmail.com>, Alistair Francis <alistair@alistair23.me>, "Edgar E. Iglesias" <edgar.iglesias@gmail.com>, Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>, "Cédric Le Goater" <clg@kaod.org>, Steven Lee <steven_lee@aspeedtech.com>, Troy Lee <leetroy@gmail.com>, Jamin Lin <jamin_lin@aspeedtech.com>, Andrew Jeffery <andrew@codeconstruct.com.au>, Joel Stanley <joel@jms.id.au>, Jason Wang <jasowang@redhat.com>, Sven Schnelle <svens@stackframe.org>, "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>, Rob Herring <robh@kernel.org>, Keith Busch <kbusch@kernel.org>, Klaus Jensen <its@irrelevant.dk>, Jesper Devantier <foss@defmacro.it>, Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>, "Frédéric Barrat" <fbarrat@linux.ibm.com>, Daniel Henrique Barboza <danielhb413@gmail.com>, Harsh Prateek Bora <harshpb@linux.ibm.com>, Fam Zheng <fam@euphon.net>, Hannes Reinecke <hare@suse.com>, Jeuk Kim <jeuk20.kim@samsung.com>
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[PULL 01/31] include/qemu/compiler: add QEMU_UNINITIALIZED attribute macro
Posted by Stefan Hajnoczi 5 months ago
The QEMU_UNINITIALIZED macro is to be used to skip the default compiler
variable initialization done by -ftrivial-auto-var-init=zero.

Use this in cases where there a method in the device I/O path (or other
important hot paths), that has large variables on the stack. A rule of
thumb is that "large" means a method with 4kb data in the local stack
frame. Any variables which are KB in size, should be annotated with this
attribute, to pre-emptively eliminate any potential overhead from the
compiler zero'ing memory.

Given that this turns off a security hardening feature, when using this
to flag variables, it is important that the code is double-checked to
ensure there is no possible use of uninitialized data in the method.

Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
Message-id: 20250610123709.835102-2-berrange@redhat.com
[DB: split off patch & rewrite guidance on when to use the annotation]
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
---
 include/qemu/compiler.h | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+)

diff --git a/include/qemu/compiler.h b/include/qemu/compiler.h
index 496dac5ac1..65b89958d3 100644
--- a/include/qemu/compiler.h
+++ b/include/qemu/compiler.h
@@ -207,6 +207,26 @@
 # define QEMU_USED
 #endif
 
+/*
+ * Disable -ftrivial-auto-var-init on a local variable.
+ *
+ * Use this in cases where there a method in the device I/O path (or other
+ * important hot paths), that has large variables on the stack. A rule of
+ * thumb is that "large" means a method with 4kb data in the local stack
+ * frame. Any variables which are KB in size, should be annotated with this
+ * attribute, to pre-emptively eliminate any potential overhead from the
+ * compiler's implicit zero'ing of memory.
+ *
+ * Given that this turns off a security hardening feature, when using this
+ * to flag variables, it is important that the code is double-checked to
+ * ensure there is no possible use of uninitialized data in the method.
+ */
+#if __has_attribute(uninitialized)
+# define QEMU_UNINITIALIZED __attribute__((uninitialized))
+#else
+# define QEMU_UNINITIALIZED
+#endif
+
 /*
  * http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ThreadSafetyAnalysis.html
  *
-- 
2.49.0