[PATCH 01/11] Initialize the mapping of KASan shadow memory

[Marc Zyngier]

On Sat, 18 Nov 2017 10:40:08 +0000
"Liuwenliang (Abbott Liu)" <liuwenliang at huawei.com> wrote:

> On Nov 17, 2017  15:36 Christoffer Dall [mailto:cdall at linaro.org]  wrote:
> >If your processor does support LPAE (like a Cortex-A15 for example),
> >then you have both the 32-bit accessors (MRC and MCR) and the 64-bit
> >accessors (MRRC, MCRR), and using the 32-bit accessor will simply access
> >the lower 32-bits of the 64-bit register.
> >
> >Hope this helps,
> >-Christoffer  
> 
> If you know the higher 32-bits of the 64-bits cp15's register is not useful for your system,
> then you can use the 32-bit accessor to get or set the 64-bit cp15's register.
> But if the higher 32-bits of the 64-bits cp15's register is useful for your system,
> then you can't use the 32-bit accessor to get or set the 64-bit cp15's register.
> 
> TTBR0/TTBR1/PAR's higher 32-bits is useful for CPU supporting LPAE.
> The following description which comes from ARM(r) Architecture Reference
> Manual ARMv7-A and ARMv7-R edition tell us the reason:
> 
> 64-bit TTBR0 and TTBR1 format:
> ...
> BADDR, bits[39:x] : 
> Translation table base address, bits[39:x]. Defining the translation table base address width on
> page B4-1698 describes how x is defined.
> The value of x determines the required alignment of the translation table, which must be aligned to
> 2x bytes.
> 
> Abbott Liu: Because BADDR on CPU supporting LPAE may be bigger than max value of 32-bit, so bits[39:32] may 
> be valid value which is useful for the system.
> 
> 64-bit PAR format
> ...
> PA[39:12]
> Physical Address. The physical address corresponding to the supplied virtual address. This field
> returns address bits[39:12].
> 
> Abbott Liu: Because Physical Address on CPU supporting LPAE may be bigger than max value of 32-bit, 
> so bits[39:32] may be valid value which is useful for the system.
> 
> Conclusion: Don't use 32-bit accessor to get or set TTBR0/TTBR1/PAR on CPU supporting LPAE,
> if you do that, your system may run error.

That's not really true. You can run an non-LPAE kernel that uses the
32bit accessors an a Cortex-A15 that supports LPAE. You're just limited
to 4GB of physical space. And you're pretty much guaranteed to have
some memory below 4GB (one way or another), or you'd have a slight
problem setting up your page tables.

	M.
-- 
Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.