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

[Russell King - ARM Linux]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 06:09:28PM +0000, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 09:59:21AM +0000, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 08:31:33AM -0600, Rob Herring wrote:
> > > So we should make all these work-arounds depend on !MULTI_PLATFORM then.
> > 
> > No, because some of the work-arounds don't require setting bits in magic
> > registers.
> > 
> > Also realise this: we test for the revision of the CPU to which they're
> > applicable before attempting to set them.  If you have a work-around
> > enabled in the kernel, and it fails at boot, _that_ is an indicator not
> > that the kernel is doing something wrong, but that you need to ensure
> > that the work-around has been applied by the earlier stages.
> > 
> > It's not about "but platform X doesn't need it" - it's about platform X
> > not having the earlier stages updated to fix the errata.
> 
> There is another aspect. Many CPUs in the field, even if they are a
> certain rxpy revision, have ECO fixes applied for critical bugs and
> don't require the workaround. Sometimes those undocumented bits have
> considerable performance impact and vendors may apply an ECO (unless
> they are very late in the tape-out process). But the ECO fix does not
> change the CPU revision, hence the workaround becomes platform specific.
> 
> That's why I think it's better if those workarounds are just pushed to
> the boot-loader for multi-platform kernels. Linux could still check the
> bits and warn about them rather than failing to boot.

... and that's a U-turn if ever there was one... it's ARM Ltd who've been
pushing to have these work-arounds in the kernel in the first place.

Should we just remove all the work-arounds, and require boot loaders,
including the one on Versatile platforms, to implement this?  Why should
we treat secure platforms be any different from the non-secure ones in
this regard?  After all, this _does_ stand in the way of a single kernel
image working properly on secure and non-secure platforms.

The more this thread progresses, the more I think the decision to put
errata into the kernel was the wrong one.