Cache issues in vexpress cpu shutdown (regression in 3.10)

Jon Medhurst (Tixy) tixy at linaro.org
Wed Jun 5 09:45:02 EDT 2013


On Wed, 2013-06-05 at 12:50 +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 05, 2013 at 12:39:12PM +0100, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 05, 2013 at 12:09:11PM +0100, Jon Medhurst (Tixy) wrote:
> > > I've been investigating why reboot fails on Versatile Express with the
> > > CA9x4 CoreTile and the problem seems to get triggered by commit bca7a5a0
> > > (ARM: cpu hotplug: remove majority of cache flushing from platforms).
> > > 
> > > Putting back the flush_cache_all() removed by this patch in
> > > mach-vexpress/hotplug.c gets reboot working again. Without that I see
> > > the following during shutdown:
> > > 
> > > CPU 2 is in _cpu_down called from disable_nonboot_cpus, and is spinning
> > > in the loop:
> > > 
> > > 	while (!idle_cpu(cpu))
> > > 		cpu_relax();
> > > 
> > > cpu == 1 here and idle_cpu() is constantly returning false because
> > > rq->curr != rq->idle and it looks like the runqueue has one process:
> > > that which issued the 'reboot' command.
> > > 
> > > CPU 1 is spinning in platform_do_lowpower and waiting for pen release to
> > > equal 1 (it's -1). Looks like it got there via the smp_ops.cpu_die(cpu)
> > > call in cpu_die.
> > 
> > This sounds like CPU2 hasn't seen the updates to CPU1 inspite of pushing
> > the contents of CPU1's cache out to point of unification in the inner
> > sharable domain (the point where all CPUs should see the same view.)
> > 
> > Are you able to look at what's visible in the caches for both CPUs for
> > things like rq->curr for CPU 1?
> > 
> > I wonder if - even though we've pushed it out of CPU 1's local cache,
> > whether there's still something to do with the coherency stuff which
> > remains incomplete.
> > 
> > Either way, this has significant implications for everyone who uses
> > flush_cache_louis() in paths where the CPU loses state - it means that
> > something is wrong with the way data is pushed out of the CPU.
> > 
> > > I'm a bit stumped by all this as I don't see why flush_cache_louis is
> > > apparently insufficient to get changes on one core seen by the other.
> > 
> > Could it be that flush_cache_louis() doesn't actually do what it claims
> > to?
> 
> Smells like erratum #643719, which was fixed in r1p0 of A9. The LoUIS value
> in the CLIDR reports 0 instead of 1.
> 
> Tixy -- if you can confirm the above (i.e. your register has the wrong
> value) then we can come up with a workaround. I'm not sure whether any
> platforms other than vexpress have such an early A9 revision though...

Yes, you have a good nose. The LoUIS value reads zero and hacking
v7_flush_dcache_louis to force it to one makes the problems go away.

So, is the correct fix to add an errata config option to add a check for
an r0p? ARM A9 when LoUIS value reads as zero?

I'm not sure that we should just add flush_cache_all back to the
vexpress cpu_enter_lowpower because flush_cache_louis is used in several
places and could also cause problems there. Though presumably not that
serious problems if we've gone this time without anyone noticing...

-- 
Tixy




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