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An OS can still use xsave incorrectly, such as by hardcoding the expected size rather than detecting it at runtime, or by getting some aspect of the CPUID leaf 0xd enumeration wrong. I wouldn't find it surprising if an initial implementation got one of the details wrong, resulting in a bug that wouldn't manifest until the next time the xsave layout changed.


The CPU designers could have protected against this by randomly fluctuating the size of the xsave'd data.


At the cost of extra bandwidth and interrupt latency.


Yes, but only marginally if they changed the size only 1 out of 1000 times.


Adding complexity (that could result in bugs) in the hope to prevent bugs by bad usage of the interface is usually a bad idea.




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