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

[Russell King (Oracle)]

On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 05:34:25PM +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> 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.

Note that the bit is in the ACPI spec:

https://uefi.org/specs/ACPI/6.5/05_ACPI_Software_Programming_Model.html#gicc-cpu-interface-flags

The new bit has the same description as per the local-APIC equivalent:

https://uefi.org/specs/ACPI/6.5/05_ACPI_Software_Programming_Model.html#local-apic-flags

for a popular architecture that does have hot-pluggable physical CPUs ;)

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