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Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v2 5/6] xen/arm: read cacheline size when needed



Hi,

On 20/02/2018 21:03, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2018, Julien Grall wrote:
On 19/02/18 21:58, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
+        mrc   CP32(r6, CSSELR_EL1)

The size of the cache is read using CSSIDR_EL1. But it looks like the way we
get the cache line size in Xen is fragile.

We are retrieving the cache line size of Level 1 and assume this will be valid
for all the other caches. Indeed cache maintenance ops may propagate to other
caches depending the target (Point of Coherency vs Point of Unification).

Looking at the ARM ARM "Cache hierarchy abstraction for address-based
operations" (D3-2061 DDI 0487C.a), CTR_EL0/CTR will holds the minimum line
lenght values for the data caches. The value will be the most efficient
address stride to use to apply a sequence of VA-based maintenance instructions
to a range of VAs.

So it would be best and safer for Xen to use CTR/CTLR_EL0.DminLine.

This is insightful, thank you. Given that this patch is a backport
candidate, I would prefer to retain the same behavior we had before in
setup_cache. I can write a separate patch on top of this to make the
change to use CTR/CTLR_EL0.DminLine. That way, we can make a separate
decision on each of them on whether we want to backport them (and
potentially revert them) or not. In other words: this patch as-is is
suboptimal but is of very little risk. Making changes to the way we
determine the cacheline size improves the patch but significantly
increases the risk factor associated with it.

Does it make sense?

By this patch you mean big.LITTLE? If so, then I don't consider it as a potential backport. big.LITTLE has never been supported on Xen and hence should be considered as a new feature. What is backportable is the patch #1 that forbid big.LITTLE.

Regarding the cache line size, I didn't suggest the change because it is more efficient. I suggested the patch because the current code to find the cache line size is wrong. Imagine there is a cache in the hierarchy that has a smaller cache line than your L1 cache. Then you would not clean/invalidate correctly that cache.

+        and   r6, r6, #0x7
+        add   r6, r6, #4
+        mov   r7, #1
+        lsl   r6, r7, r6
           mov   r7, r3
     1:      mcr   CP32(r7, DCCMVAC)
diff --git a/xen/arch/arm/arm64/head.S b/xen/arch/arm/arm64/head.S
index fa0ef70..edea300 100644
--- a/xen/arch/arm/arm64/head.S
+++ b/xen/arch/arm/arm64/head.S
@@ -631,8 +631,14 @@ ENTRY(relocate_xen)
           dsb   sy        /* So the CPU issues all writes to the range */
             mov   x9, x3
-        ldr   x10, =cacheline_bytes /* x10 := step */
-        ldr   x10, [x10]
+
+        mov   x10, #0
+        msr   CSSELR_EL1, x10
+        mrs   x10, CSSELR_EL1
+        and   x10, x10, #0x7
+        add   x10, x10, #4
+        mov   x11, #1
+        lsl   x10, x11, x10

Please use dcache_line_size macro (see cache.S).

Similarly, I would prefer to retain the same old behavior here, and
fix it/improve it in a separate patch.

See above, you got the wrong end of the stick about the cache line size.

Cheers,

--
Julien Grall

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