Mikael Pettersson wrote:
Maybe not. I had a look in Intel's SDM Vol3, and the section "switching to protected mode" specifies that a move to %cr0 that sets PE should immediately be followed by a far jmp or call. They write that "random failures can occur if other instructions exist between [the move to %cr0] and [the far jmp/call]". The current version of pmjump.S does exactly that: it executes a bunch of moves to segment registers in that window. (Section 9.9.1 in the Sept. 2005 revision I have in front of me.) Similarly, section "serializing instructions" writes that a move to %cr0 that enables or disables paging should be followed by a jump. They write that this isn't required in P4 or P6 family processors, but is required for compatibility with other ia32 processors. Reading between the lines, they imply that older ia32 processors don't treat %cr0 writes as completely serializing. (Section 7.4 in the Sept. 2005 revision.)
The problem is that Intel has a tendency to exaggerate in their documentation; in particular, they tend not to remove restrictions that are long-since obsolete. However, it sounds like you have actually found a CPU for which this restriction is motivated.
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