I got a question on my earlier ABI post about Hot Patchability, so I thought I'd go into excruciating detail on that one, since it's not quite as complicated as exception handling
Hot patchable means that, primarily, you're able to take a running application and, given sufficient privileges, atomically changes all calls from function A to switch to function B. At a high level, this allows you to patch a running process without requiring that the process be stopped [2 steps better than a reboot!] This is really important in the "Server Up-Time" scenarios that are becoming more and more common. It allows a patch to be deployed without even stopping a process [for more than the length of a standard context switch, anyway].
Maybe you won't, but if you're deploying server code, you probably don't want to have to terminate the process to deploy a security patch, right? Microsoft's customers really don't like it when we make 'em restart their server processes.
First, remember that I'm a compiler guy, not a debugger guy, or a kernel guy, or anything else, but here's my understanding: First, you build your patched function. This is a non-trivial amount of work. It must have a compatible function signature with the function it's replacing. It also needs to have special code to access any globals that are needed, since it's generally loaded as a separate DLL [though I imagine a tricky debugger guy could do some kind of nutty code injection where that isn't necessary]. Once you have the code authored, you have to deploy the patch. This is where the ABI restrictions come in.
First, all functions must start with a 2 byte (or larger) instruction - if you start with a push, stick a size prefix on it. Second, all functions must be preceded by 6 bytes of padding. Finally, any image that needs to be hotpatchable should also have some amount of 'scratch space' within 2GB of it's image location. Why, you ask? Well, here's how hot-patching actually works:
Pause the process and load your hot patch dll into the address space [again, I don't know all the mechanics for this, but I know it's not too difficult. Next, write to that 'scratch space' the address of your hot patch function. Now, write the 6 bytes JMP [PC-relative scratch space] into the 6 bytes of padding before the function you're trying to replace. Finally, write the 2 bytes jmp PC-6 into the first two bytes of your function. Resume the process, and your hot patch function is merrily running instead of the old one.
JMP [PC-relative scratch space]
jmp PC-6
The point of the 2 byte instruction at the start of each function is so that you don't ever have to worry about pausing your process in the middle of the two bytes you're going to change with the jmp PC-6 instruction. Nothing else is really interesting. You setup a launch pad to your scratch space, which is where the target address lives. No rocket science, here, nosiree.
Honestly, I don't think there's anything that prevents you from breaking these particular rules, except the cost is so minimal, there's really just no good reason not to do it. X86 has something like a 30% hot-patchable kernel. And x64 has a 100% hot-patchable kernel. You tell me which one is better.
This would be ok if you haven't advised people to use the size prefix (also known as LCP) -- it slows instruction decoding on Core 2 CPUs in x64 mode.
Is this why I'm seeing a lot of "mov edi, edi" instructions at the start of many functions these days?
correct me if I'm wrong, "mov edi, edi" is exactly 2 bytes?
also, sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, how do you pause a process, through API calls?
Yes, that's what they're there for - x86 hot-patching. x64 hot-patching is really cheap. x86 hot-patching is not quite so cheap, because it's full of 2 byte NOP's...
As far as the LCP on the opening PUSH, yes it slows down Core2's by a single cycle. But I challenge anyone to actually measure that impact in any real-world scenario...