Hi Ian, On Fri, Nov 08, 2013 at 10:25:55AM +0000, Ian Campbell wrote: > On Fri, 2013-11-08 at 09:40 +0100, Maxime Ripard wrote: > > > I'm trying to work out if we can make this work with the requirement > > > which both Xen and KVM have to enter the kernel in NS-HYP mode. > > > > > > The way this works on e.g. vexpress is (roughly) that u-boot wakes up > > > the secondary CPUs from the lowlevel firmware and places them into its > > > own holding pen, which has the same wake up protocol as the firmware so > > > the kernel can just use the same code. If u-boot never gets to run on > > > secondary CPUs that isn't going to help much. > > > > > > My concern is that the sequence here appears to involve resetting the > > > secondary CPU, which I figure will probably defeat that strategy by > > > kicking the CPU back into the lowlevel firmware in the reset state, > > > meaning it can't be done by a u-boot only change. > > > > I think this is where we're headed for the A20, Marc was interested in > > doing that, > > Marc Zyngier is that?
Ah yes. I forgot to put it in CC...
> > since we already have pretty much this in u-boot already,
> > however, this is not the case for the A31.
>
> > As far as I know, the Allwinner's bootloader that we currently use
> > isn't bringing up the secondary CPUs, and we don't have any port of
> > some sort of u-boot yet that we could work on.
>
> Ah, OK. I'd assumed that A20 and A31 (indeed, most sunxi platforms) were
> mostly equivalent as far as u-boot support went.
No. The A31 has no current support at all in u-boot(-sunxi, that is),
so the only bootloader we can use is Allwinner's one.
It's one my TODO list somewhere, but as usual, time is lacking :)
> > So, I guess we don't really have much choice in that case, even though
> > eventually I'd like to have this for the A31 too.
>
> Right, I suppose it makes sense to consider what we want to do on the
> A20 now and keep in mind that A31 may want to follow in the future.
>
> > > Hrm, what to do ... perhaps a DT driven selection between this mechanism
> > > and sev to kick a wfe loop reading the private register?
> >
> > We can discuss this whenever we will actually have that choice to
> > make, but maybe a kernel parameter would be better?
>
> I don't think so -- u-boot would then have to munge the command line to
> say that it had/had not brought up secondaries. DTB seems more natural
> to me. e.g. on ARMv8 there is already a requirement to provide a per-CPU
> property describing the bringup protocol ("PSCI" and "spintable" are the
> options there).
Then I guess we can assume that we have to do all the CPU bring up
work if this property is missing?
> Anyway, once I get to the point of being able to do something I'll
> coordinate with Marc etc and figure out what to do. In the meantime I
> think having the kernel do the bringup (like this patch does) is
> sensible. It's very likely to be what we want to do in the absence of
> any instruction to the contrary (DTB or otherwise) in the future anyway.
Yep.
A part from the discussion on the approach, do you have any comments
on the patches themselves?
Thanks!
Maxime
--
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com
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