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    Merge branch 'mm-pkeys-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip · 643ad15d
    Linus Torvalds authored
    Pull x86 protection key support from Ingo Molnar:
     "This tree adds support for a new memory protection hardware feature
      that is available in upcoming Intel CPUs: 'protection keys' (pkeys).
    
      There's a background article at LWN.net:
    
          https://lwn.net/Articles/643797/
    
      The gist is that protection keys allow the encoding of
      user-controllable permission masks in the pte.  So instead of having a
      fixed protection mask in the pte (which needs a system call to change
      and works on a per page basis), the user can map a (handful of)
      protection mask variants and can change the masks runtime relatively
      cheaply, without having to change every single page in the affected
      virtual memory range.
    
      This allows the dynamic switching of the protection bits of large
      amounts of virtual memory, via user-space instructions.  It also
      allows more precise control of MMU permission bits: for example the
      executable b...
    643ad15d