The first is the `irq_stack_ptr`. From the variable's name, it is obvious that this is a pointer to the top of the stack. The second - `irq_count` is used to check if a CPU is already on an interrupt stack or not. Initialization of the `irq_stack_ptr` is located in the `setup_per_cpu_areas` function in [arch/x86/kernel/setup_percpu.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/kernel/setup_percpu.c):
The first is the `irq_stack_ptr` pointer. From the variable's name, it is obvious that this is a pointer to the top of the stack. The second - `irq_count` is used to check if a CPU is already on an interrupt stack or not. Initialization of the `irq_stack_ptr` is located in the `setup_per_cpu_areas` function in [arch/x86/kernel/setup_percpu.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/kernel/setup_percpu.c) source code file and looks:
Here we go over all the CPUs one-by-one and setup `irq_stack_ptr`. This turns out to be equal to the top of the interrupt stack minus `64`. Why `64`?TODO [arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.c](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.c) source code file is following:
and as we already know the `gs` register points to the bottom of the interrupt stack.
Here we go over all the CPUs one-by-one and setup `irq_stack_ptr`.
```assembly
movl $MSR_GS_BASE,%ecx
movl initial_gs(%rip),%eax
movl initial_gs+4(%rip),%edx
wrmsr
GLOBAL(initial_gs)
.quad INIT_PER_CPU_VAR(irq_stack_union)
```
Here we can see the `wrmsr` instruction which loads the data from `edx:eax` into the [Model specific register](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-specific_register) pointed by the `ecx` register. In our case the model specific register is `MSR_GS_BASE` which contains the base address of the memory segment pointed by the `gs` register. `edx:eax` points to the address of the `initial_gs` which is the base address of our `irq_stack_union`.
We already know that `x86_64` has a feature called `Interrupt Stack Table` or `IST` and this feature provides the ability to switch to a new stack for events non-maskable interrupt, double fault etc. There can be up to seven `IST` entries per-cpu. Some of them are:
We already know that `x86_64` has a feature called `Interrupt Stack Table` or `IST` and this feature provides the ability to switch to a new stack for events non-maskable interrupt, double fault etc. There can be up to seven `IST` entries per-cpu. Some of them are: