Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754266AbbGXJog (ORCPT ); Fri, 24 Jul 2015 05:44:36 -0400 Received: from eu-smtp-delivery-143.mimecast.com ([207.82.80.143]:13185 "EHLO eu-smtp-delivery-143.mimecast.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752847AbbGXJoc (ORCPT ); Fri, 24 Jul 2015 05:44:32 -0400 From: "Suzuki K. Poulose" To: linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org Cc: catalin.marinas@arm.com, will.deacon@arm.com, mark.rutland@arm.com, edward.nevill@linaro.org, aph@redhat.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, "Suzuki K. Poulose" Subject: [RFC PATCH 01/10] arm64: feature registers: Documentation Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2015 10:43:47 +0100 Message-Id: <1437731037-25795-2-git-send-email-suzuki.poulose@arm.com> X-Mailer: git-send-email 1.7.9.5 In-Reply-To: <1437731037-25795-1-git-send-email-suzuki.poulose@arm.com> References: <1437731037-25795-1-git-send-email-suzuki.poulose@arm.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 24 Jul 2015 09:44:30.0324 (UTC) FILETIME=[56894340:01D0C5F5] X-MC-Unique: oqSPXsKrR3iBC4p3r6DusA-1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mail.home.local id t6O9igge027084 Content-Length: 9605 Lines: 209 From: "Suzuki K. Poulose" Documentation of the infrastructure Signed-off-by: Suzuki K. Poulose --- Documentation/arm64/cpu-feature-registers.txt | 185 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 185 insertions(+) create mode 100644 Documentation/arm64/cpu-feature-registers.txt diff --git a/Documentation/arm64/cpu-feature-registers.txt b/Documentation/arm64/cpu-feature-registers.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..08030be --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/arm64/cpu-feature-registers.txt @@ -0,0 +1,185 @@ + ARM64 CPU Feature Registers + =========================== + +Author: Suzuki K. Poulose + + +This file describes the API for exporting the AArch64 CPU ID/feature registers +to userspace. + +1. Motivation +--------------- + +The ARM architecture defines a set of feature registers, which describe +the capabilities of the CPU/system. Access to these system registers is +restricted from EL0 and there is no reliable way for an application to +extract this information to make better decisions at runtime. There is +limited information available to the application via ELF_HWCAPs, however +there are some issues with their usage. + + a) Any change to the HWCAPs requires an update to userspace (e.g libc) + to detect the new changes, which can take a long time to appear in + distributions. Exposing the registers allows applications to get the + information without requiring other userspace components to be updated. + + b) Access to HWCAPs is sometimes restricted (e.g prior to libc, or when ld is + initialised at startup time). + + c) HWCAPs cannot represent non-boolean information effectively. The + architecture defines a canonical format for representing features + in the ID registers; this is well defined and is capable of + representing all valid architecture variations. Exposing the ID + registers avoids having to come up with HWCAP representations + and parsing code. + + +2. Requirements +----------------- + + a) Safety : + Applications should be able to use the information provided by the + infrastructure to run optimally safely across the system. This has + greater implications on a system with heterogeneous CPUs. The + infrastructure exports a value that is safe across all the available + CPU on the system. + + e.g, If at least one CPU doesn't implement CRC32 instructions, while others + do, we should report that the CRC32 is not implemented. Otherwise an + application could crash when scheduled on the CPU which doesn't support + CRC32. + + b) Security : + Applications should only be able to receive information that is relevant + to the normal operation in userspace. Hence, some of the fields + are masked out and the values of the fields are set to indicate the + feature is 'not supported' (See the 'visible' field in the + table in Section 4). Also, the kernel may manipulate the fields based on what + it supports. e.g, If FP is not supported by the kernel, the values + could indicate that the FP is not available (even when the CPU provides + it). + + c) Implementation Defined Features + The infrastructure doesn't expose any register which is + IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED as per ARMv8-A Architecture and is set to 0. + + d) CPU Identification : + MIDR_EL1 is exposed to help identify the processor. On a heterogeneous + system, this could be racy (just like getcpu()). The process could be + migrated to another CPU by the time we use the register value. Hence, + there is no guarantee that the value reflects the processor that it is + currently executing on. + +The list of supported registers and the attributes of individual +feature bits are listed in section 4. Unless there is absolute necessity, +we don't encourage the addition of new feature registers to the list. +In any case, it should comply to the requirements listed above. + +3. Implementation +-------------------- + +The infrastructure is built on the emulation of the 'MRS' instruction. +Accessing a restricted system register from an application generates an +exception and ends up in SIGILL being delivered to the process. +The infrastructure hooks into the exception handler and emulates the +operation if the source belongs to the supported system register space. + +The infrastructure emulates only the following system register space: + Op0=3, Op1=0, CRn=0 + +(See Table C5-6 'System instruction encodings for System register accesses' + in ARMv8 ARM, for the list of registers). + + +The following rules are applied to the value returned by the infrastructure: + + a) The value of an 'IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED' field is set to 0. + b) The value of a reserved field is set to the reserved value(as + defined by the architecture). + c) The value of a field marked as not 'visible', is set to indicate + the feature is missing (as defined by the architecture). + d) The value of a 'visible' field holds the system wide safe value + for the particular feature(except for MIDR_EL1, see section 4) + +There are only a few registers visible to the userspace. See Section 4, +for the list of 'visible' registers. + +The registers which are either reserved RAZ or IMPLEMENTAION DEFINED are +emulated as 0. + +All others are emulated as having 'invisible' features. + +4. List of exposed registers +----------------------------- + + 1) ID_AA64ISAR0_EL1 - Instruction Set Attribute Register 0 + x--------------------------------------------------x + | Name | bits | visible | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | RAZ | [63-20] | n | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | CRC32 | [19-16] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | SHA2 | [15-12] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | SHA1 | [11-8] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | AES | [7-4] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | RAZ | [3-0] | n | + x--------------------------------------------------x + + 2) ID_AA64ISAR1_EL1 - Instruction Set Attribute Register 1 + x--------------------------------------------------x + | Name | bits | visible | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | RAZ | [63-0] | y | + x--------------------------------------------------x + + 3) ID_AA64PFR0_EL1 - Processor Feature Register 0 + x--------------------------------------------------x + | Name | bits | visible | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | RAZ | [63-28] | n | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | GIC | [27-24] | n | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | AdvSIMD | [23-20] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | FP | [19-16] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | EL3 | [15-12] | n | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | EL2 | [11-8] | n | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | EL1 | [7-4] | n | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | EL0 | [3-0] | n | + x--------------------------------------------------x + + 4) ID_AA64PFR1_EL1 - Processor Feature Register 1 + x--------------------------------------------------x + | Name | bits | visible | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | RAZ | [63-0] | y | + x--------------------------------------------------x + + 5) MIDR_EL1 - Main ID Register + x--------------------------------------------------x + | Name | bits | visible | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | RAZ | [63-32] | n | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | Implementer | [31-24] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | Variant | [23-20] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | Architecture | [19-16] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | PartNum | [15-4] | y | + |--------------------------------------------------| + | Revision | [3-0] | y | + x--------------------------------------------------x + + NOTE: The 'visible' fields of MIDR_EL1 will contain the value + as available on the CPU where it is fetched and is not a system + wide safe value. -- 1.7.9.5 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/