[PATCH rc v7 2/4] iommu/arm-smmu-v3: Mark STE MEV safe when computing the update sequence

Nicolin Chen nicolinc at nvidia.com
Thu Jan 15 10:23:29 PST 2026


From: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg at nvidia.com>

Nested CD tables set the MEV bit to try to reduce multi-fault spamming on
the hypervisor. Since MEV is in STE word 1 this causes a breaking update
sequence that is not required and impacts real workloads.

For the purposes of STE updates the value of MEV doesn't matter, if it is
set/cleared early or late it just results in a change to the fault reports
that must be supported by the kernel anyhow. The spec says:

 Note: Software must expect, and be able to deal with, coalesced fault
 records even when MEV == 0.

So mark STE MEV safe when computing the update sequence, to avoid creating
a breaking update.

Fixes: da0c56520e88 ("iommu/arm-smmu-v3: Set MEV bit in nested STE for DoS mitigations")
Cc: stable at vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg at nvidia.com>
Reviewed-by: Shuai Xue <xueshuai at linux.alibaba.com>
Reviewed-by: Mostafa Saleh <smostafa at google.com>
Reviewed-by: Pranjal Shrivastava <praan at google.com>
Signed-off-by: Nicolin Chen <nicolinc at nvidia.com>
---
 drivers/iommu/arm/arm-smmu-v3/arm-smmu-v3.c | 10 ++++++++++
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)

diff --git a/drivers/iommu/arm/arm-smmu-v3/arm-smmu-v3.c b/drivers/iommu/arm/arm-smmu-v3/arm-smmu-v3.c
index 390446d259ab..ccd6357fa5a8 100644
--- a/drivers/iommu/arm/arm-smmu-v3/arm-smmu-v3.c
+++ b/drivers/iommu/arm/arm-smmu-v3/arm-smmu-v3.c
@@ -1086,6 +1086,16 @@ VISIBLE_IF_KUNIT
 void arm_smmu_get_ste_update_safe(const __le64 *cur, const __le64 *target,
 				  __le64 *safe_bits)
 {
+	/*
+	 * MEV does not meaningfully impact the operation of the HW, it only
+	 * changes how many fault events are generated, thus we can relax it
+	 * when computing the ordering. The spec notes the device can act like
+	 * MEV=1 anyhow:
+	 *
+	 *  Note: Software must expect, and be able to deal with, coalesced
+	 *  fault records even when MEV == 0.
+	 */
+	safe_bits[1] |= cpu_to_le64(STRTAB_STE_1_MEV);
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL_IF_KUNIT(arm_smmu_get_ste_update_safe);
 
-- 
2.43.0




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