1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 2 3===================== 4AMD Memory Encryption 5===================== 6 7Secure Memory Encryption (SME) and Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) are 8features found on AMD processors. 9 10SME provides the ability to mark individual pages of memory as encrypted using 11the standard x86 page tables. A page that is marked encrypted will be 12automatically decrypted when read from DRAM and encrypted when written to 13DRAM. SME can therefore be used to protect the contents of DRAM from physical 14attacks on the system. 15 16SEV enables running encrypted virtual machines (VMs) in which the code and data 17of the guest VM are secured so that a decrypted version is available only 18within the VM itself. SEV guest VMs have the concept of private and shared 19memory. Private memory is encrypted with the guest-specific key, while shared 20memory may be encrypted with hypervisor key. When SME is enabled, the hypervisor 21key is the same key which is used in SME. 22 23A page is encrypted when a page table entry has the encryption bit set (see 24below on how to determine its position). The encryption bit can also be 25specified in the cr3 register, allowing the PGD table to be encrypted. Each 26successive level of page tables can also be encrypted by setting the encryption 27bit in the page table entry that points to the next table. This allows the full 28page table hierarchy to be encrypted. Note, this means that just because the 29encryption bit is set in cr3, doesn't imply the full hierarchy is encrypted. 30Each page table entry in the hierarchy needs to have the encryption bit set to 31achieve that. So, theoretically, you could have the encryption bit set in cr3 32so that the PGD is encrypted, but not set the encryption bit in the PGD entry 33for a PUD which results in the PUD pointed to by that entry to not be 34encrypted. 35 36When SEV is enabled, instruction pages and guest page tables are always treated 37as private. All the DMA operations inside the guest must be performed on shared 38memory. Since the memory encryption bit is controlled by the guest OS when it 39is operating in 64-bit or 32-bit PAE mode, in all other modes the SEV hardware 40forces the memory encryption bit to 1. 41 42Support for SME and SEV can be determined through the CPUID instruction. The 43CPUID function 0x8000001f reports information related to SME:: 44 45 0x8000001f[eax]: 46 Bit[0] indicates support for SME 47 Bit[1] indicates support for SEV 48 0x8000001f[ebx]: 49 Bits[5:0] pagetable bit number used to activate memory 50 encryption 51 Bits[11:6] reduction in physical address space, in bits, when 52 memory encryption is enabled (this only affects 53 system physical addresses, not guest physical 54 addresses) 55 56If support for SME is present, MSR 0xc00100010 (MSR_AMD64_SYSCFG) can be used to 57determine if SME is enabled and/or to enable memory encryption:: 58 59 0xc0010010: 60 Bit[23] 0 = memory encryption features are disabled 61 1 = memory encryption features are enabled 62 63If SEV is supported, MSR 0xc0010131 (MSR_AMD64_SEV) can be used to determine if 64SEV is active:: 65 66 0xc0010131: 67 Bit[0] 0 = memory encryption is not active 68 1 = memory encryption is active 69 70Linux relies on BIOS to set this bit if BIOS has determined that the reduction 71in the physical address space as a result of enabling memory encryption (see 72CPUID information above) will not conflict with the address space resource 73requirements for the system. If this bit is not set upon Linux startup then 74Linux itself will not set it and memory encryption will not be possible. 75 76The state of SME in the Linux kernel can be documented as follows: 77 78 - Supported: 79 The CPU supports SME (determined through CPUID instruction). 80 81 - Enabled: 82 Supported and bit 23 of MSR_AMD64_SYSCFG is set. 83 84 - Active: 85 Supported, Enabled and the Linux kernel is actively applying 86 the encryption bit to page table entries (the SME mask in the 87 kernel is non-zero). 88 89SME can also be enabled and activated in the BIOS. If SME is enabled and 90activated in the BIOS, then all memory accesses will be encrypted and it will 91not be necessary to activate the Linux memory encryption support. If the BIOS 92merely enables SME (sets bit 23 of the MSR_AMD64_SYSCFG), then Linux can activate 93memory encryption by default (CONFIG_AMD_MEM_ENCRYPT_ACTIVE_BY_DEFAULT=y) or 94by supplying mem_encrypt=on on the kernel command line. However, if BIOS does 95not enable SME, then Linux will not be able to activate memory encryption, even 96if configured to do so by default or the mem_encrypt=on command line parameter 97is specified. 98