diff options
| author | Punit Agrawal <punit.agrawal@arm.com> | 2014-11-18 11:41:24 +0000 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com> | 2014-11-20 16:33:53 +0000 |
| commit | 587064b610c703f259317d00dc37bf6d40f4fc74 (patch) | |
| tree | 4170a2e03c6d046c45811f22ab662b988d73ae48 /Documentation/arm64 | |
| parent | 0be0e44c182c4f13df13903fd1377671d157d7b7 (diff) | |
arm64: Add framework for legacy instruction emulation
Typically, providing support for legacy instructions requires
emulating the behaviour of instructions whose encodings have become
undefined. If the instructions haven't been removed from the
architecture, there maybe an option in the implementation to turn
on/off the support for these instructions.
Create common infrastructure to support legacy instruction
emulation. In addition to emulation, also provide an option to support
hardware execution when supported. The default execution mode (one of
undef, emulate, hw exeuction) is dependent on the state of the
instruction (deprecated or obsolete) in the architecture and
can specified at the time of registering the instruction handlers. The
runtime state of the emulation can be controlled by writing to
individual nodes in sysctl. The expected default behaviour is
documented as part of this patch.
Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Punit Agrawal <punit.agrawal@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/arm64')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/arm64/legacy_instructions.txt | 33 |
1 files changed, 33 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/arm64/legacy_instructions.txt b/Documentation/arm64/legacy_instructions.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..49d4867c0c09 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/arm64/legacy_instructions.txt @@ -0,0 +1,33 @@ +The arm64 port of the Linux kernel provides infrastructure to support +emulation of instructions which have been deprecated, or obsoleted in +the architecture. The infrastructure code uses undefined instruction +hooks to support emulation. Where available it also allows turning on +the instruction execution in hardware. + +The emulation mode can be controlled by writing to sysctl nodes +(/proc/sys/abi). The following explains the different execution +behaviours and the corresponding values of the sysctl nodes - + +* Undef + Value: 0 + Generates undefined instruction abort. Default for instructions that + have been obsoleted in the architecture, e.g., SWP + +* Emulate + Value: 1 + Uses software emulation. To aid migration of software, in this mode + usage of emulated instruction is traced as well as rate limited + warnings are issued. This is the default for deprecated + instructions, .e.g., CP15 barriers + +* Hardware Execution + Value: 2 + Although marked as deprecated, some implementations may support the + enabling/disabling of hardware support for the execution of these + instructions. Using hardware execution generally provides better + performance, but at the loss of ability to gather runtime statistics + about the use of the deprecated instructions. + +The default mode depends on the status of the instruction in the +architecture. Deprecated instructions should default to emulation +while obsolete instructions must be undefined by default. |