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Date:   Tue, 17 Jan 2023 13:20:53 -0600
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From:   Alex Elder <elder@linaro.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v8 05/28] virt: gunyah: Add hypercalls to identify Gunyah
To:     Elliot Berman <quic_eberman@quicinc.com>,
        Alex Elder <elder@linaro.org>,
        Bjorn Andersson <quic_bjorande@quicinc.com>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>,
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        Murali Nalajala <quic_mnalajal@quicinc.com>
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        Srivatsa Vaddagiri <quic_svaddagi@quicinc.com>,
        Carl van Schaik <quic_cvanscha@quicinc.com>,
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        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
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        Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzysztof.kozlowski+dt@linaro.org>,
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On 1/10/23 11:56 AM, Elliot Berman wrote:
>> Is there any need for the endianness of these values to be specified?
>> Does Gunyah operate with a well-defined endianness?  Is there any
>> chance a VM can run with an endianness different from Gunyah?  I
>> see that the arm_smcc_* structures are defined without endianness.
>> (Sorry if these are dumb questions.)
>>
> 
> All of the data transfers for hypercalls happen via registers, so 
> endianness doesn't have impact here (there is no "low address" in a 
> register).

I don't believe that is technically true.  Practically speaking,
it's probably almost *always* little-endian.  But for example,
here:

https://developer.arm.com/documentation/102376/0100/Alignment-and-endianness
it says:

     Endianness

     In Armv8-A, instruction fetches are always treated as
     little-endian.

     For data accesses, it is IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED whether
     both little-endian and big-endian are supported. And if
     only one is supported, it is IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED
     which one is supported.

     For processors that support both big-endian and
     little-endian, endianness is configured per Exception
     level.

Perhaps that last sentence doesn't apply to HVC exceptions
but to me it *sounds* like it's at least possible for a VM
to be running with an endianness that differs from the
hypervisor (perhaps not other VMs though.)

This is not an area of expertise of mine, so I would love
for someone who knows more to correct me if I'm wrong.

It's likely to be fine as-is, but (other than the work to
do it and get it right) it doesn't hurt to specify it and
do the conversions as data is passes to/from the hypervisor.

					-Alex