[PATCH] ARM: Fix errata 751472 handling on Cortex-A9 r1p*

Rob Herring robherring2 at gmail.com
Thu Nov 15 09:31:33 EST 2012


On 11/15/2012 05:01 AM, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 12:54:48AM +0000, Rob Herring wrote:
>> On 11/14/2012 04:21 PM, Tony Lindgren wrote:
>>> * Rob Herring <robherring2 at gmail.com> [121114 13:59]:
>>>> On 11/14/2012 02:32 PM, Tony Lindgren wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Checking for the bit already set should work in this case, I'll post
>>>>> a patch for that shortly.
>>>>
>>>> Can you actually read the state of the diagnostic register in non-secure
>>>> mode? If you can on the A9, is the same true on A8 or others?
>>>
>>> Looks like it can be read on at least TI omap 4430 which is A9.
>>> But it reads as zero, so the below patch is what I came up with.
>>>
>>> No idea if assuming that zero value for the diagnostic register
>>> is safe.. What's the default value of the diagnostic register supposed
>>> to be?
>>
>> RTFM. Oh, wait it's a super secret, undocumented register. We shouldn't
>> even be talking about it.
>>
>> It could vary by rev, but I see 0 for the reset value, so this would not
>> work if the bootloader did not do any setup of the diagnostic register.
>>
>> One way to determine secure mode on the A9 would be seeing if you can
>> change the auxcr register. Something like this (untested):
>>
>> mrc	p15, 0, r0, c1, c0, 1; Read ACTLR
>> eor	r1, r0, #0x100		; Modify alloc in 1 way
>> mcr	p15, 0, r1, c1, c0, 1
>> mrc	p15, 0, r2, c1, c0, 1; Read ACTLR
>> mcr	p15, 0, r0, c1, c0, 1	; Restore original value
>> cmp	r1, r2
>> bne	skip_errata
> 
> This would fail on platforms where Linux runs in non-secure mode. What
> we do for some errata workarounds is to test whether the bit was already
> set and avoid writing the register. But this assumes that, for a given
> workaround in the kernel, there is a corresponding workaround in the
> code running before the kernel (boot-loader, firmware) which sets that
> bit.
> 
> Since the kernel will run more often in non-secure mode (on Cortex-A15
> you need this for the virtualisation extensions) I strongly suggest that
> the workaround (usually undocumented bit setting) is done before the
> kernel is started and we simply remove it from Linux (or add a clear
> comment that it only works if running in secure mode; if unsure say
> 'N').
> 
> I don't think it's worth the hassle detecting whether the kernel runs in
> secure or non-secure mode, just assume the latter and get SoC vendors to
> update the boot loaders or firmware (if possible) with any errata
> workarounds.

There's other places we need to know secure vs. non-secure mode like
whether we can do smc calls or not.

So we should make all these work-arounds depend on !MULTI_PLATFORM then.
Does that work for Versatile Express CA9? It needs ARM_ERRATA_751472.

Rob

> 
> Having a common SMC API for errata workarounds is not feasible since not
> all registers are public, most are implementation specific and it could
> have secure implications with exposing them.
> 




More information about the linux-arm-kernel mailing list