[RFC PATCH v2 27/35] ACPICA: Add new MADT GICC flags fields [code first?]

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On Thu, 14 Sept 2023 at 16:55, Jonathan Cameron
<Jonathan.Cameron at huawei.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:57:44 +0200
> Ard Biesheuvel <ardb at kernel.org> wrote:
>
> > Hello James,
> >
> > On Wed, 13 Sept 2023 at 18:41, James Morse <james.morse at arm.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Add the new flag field to the MADT's GICC structure.
> > >
> > > 'Online Capable' indicates a disabled CPU can be enabled later.
> > >
> >
> > Why do we need a bit for this? What would be the point of describing
> > disabled CPUs that cannot be enabled (and are you are aware of
> > firmware doing this?).
>
> Enabled being not set is common at some similar ACPI tables at least.
>
> This is available in most ACPI tables to allow firmware to use 'nearly'
> static tables and just tweak the 'enabled' bit to say if the record should
> be ignored or not. Also _STA not present which is for same trick.
> If you are doing clever dynamic tables, then you can just not present
> the entry.
>
> With that existing use case in mind, need another bit to say this
> one might one day turn up.  Note this is copied from x86 though no
> one seems to have implemented the kernel support for them yet.
>
> Note as per my other reply - this isn't a code first proposal. It's in the
> spec already (via a code first proposal last year I think).
>
> >
> > So why are we not able to assume that this new bit can always be treated as '1'?
>
> Given above, need the extra bit to size stuff to allow for the CPU showing up
> late.
>

So does this mean that on x86, the CPU object is instantiated only
when the hardware level hotplug occurs? And before that, the object
does not exist at all?

Because it seems to me that _STA, having both enabled and present
bits, could already describe what we need here, and arguably, a CPU
that is not both present and enabled should not be used by the OS.
This would leave room for representing off-line CPUs as present but
not enabled.

Apologies if I am missing something obvious here - the whole rationale
behind this thing is rather confusing to me.