[RFC PATCH 0/5] Add smp booting support for Qualcomm ARMv8 SoCs

[Kumar Gala]

> On Apr 14, 2015, at 11:36 AM, Mark Rutland <mark.rutland at arm.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2015 at 11:05:29AM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 09, 2015 at 12:37:06PM -0500, Kumar Gala wrote:
>>> This patch set adds support for SMP boot on the MSM8x16 family of Qualcomm SoCs.
>>> 
>>> To support SMP on the MSM8x16 SoCs we need to add ARMv8/64-bit SCM interfaces to
>>> setup the boot/release addresses for the secondary CPUs.  In addition we need
>>> a uniquie set of cpu ops.  I'm aware the desired methods for booting secondary
>>> CPUs is either via spintable or PSCI.  However, these SoCs are shipping with a
>>> firmware that does not support those methods.
>> 
>> And the reason is? Some guesses:
>> 
>> a) QC doesn't think boot interface (and cpuidle) standardisation is
>>   worth the effort (to put it nicely)
>> b) The hardware was available before we even mentioned PSCI
>> c) PSCI is not suitable for the QC's SCM interface
>> d) Any combination of the above
>> 
>> I strongly suspect it's point (a). Should we expect future QC hardware
>> to do the same?
>> 
>> You could argue the reason was (b), though we've been discussing PSCI
>> for at least two years and, according to QC press releases, MSM8916
>> started sampling in 2014.
>> 
>> The only valid reason is (c) and if that's the case, I would expect a
>> proposal for a new firmware interface protocol (it could be PSCI-based),
>> well documented, that can be shared with others that may encounter the
>> same shortcomings.
> 
> There's no need to even fork PSCI. The PSCI specification will evolve
> over time as vendors request changes and we try to accomodate them.
> 
> If there's something that PSCI doesn't do that you need it to, contact
> ARM. Other vendors already have.

But what is someone to do between the period of getting PSCI spec updated and needing to ship a product with firmware?

The take still sounds like if you don’t implement an exact version of PSCI you are screwed from being supported in the upstream ARM64 kernel.

- k

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