[PATCH v2 07/17] irqchip/gic: Atomically update affinity

Russell King (Oracle) linux at armlinux.org.uk
Thu Sep 9 08:37:03 PDT 2021


On Thu, Sep 09, 2021 at 05:22:01PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> Despite the ARM Generic Interrupt Controller Architecture Specification
> (both version 1.0 and 2.0) stating that the Interrupt Processor Targets
> Registers are byte-accessible, the EMMA Mobile EV2 User's Manual
> states that the interrupt registers can be accessed via the APB bus,
> in 32-bit units.  Using byte accesses locks up the system.

Fun. Seems someone can't read ARMs documentation. Even the old
ARM IHI 0048B.b document I have for the GIC from 2013 states
"In addition, the GICD_IPRIORITYRn, GICD_ITARGETSRn, GICD_CPENDSGIRn,
and GICD_SPENDSGIRn registers support byte accesses."

However, this kind of thing is sadly not uncommon. There's been a
similar issue with the PL011 UART driver as well - some platforms
require 16-bit accesses instead of normal 32-bit accesses.

> Unfortunately I only have remote access to the board showing the
> issue.  I did check that adding the writeb_relaxed() before the
> writel_relaxed() that was used before also causes a lock-up, so the
> issue is not an endian mismatch.
> Looking at the driver history, these registers have always been
> accessed using 32-bit accesses before.  As byte accesses lead
> indeed to simpler code, I'm wondering if they had been tried before,
> and caused issues before?
> 
> Since you said the locking was bogus before, due to the reliance on
> the BL_SWITCHER option, I'm not suggesting a plain revert, but I'm
> wondering what kind of locking you suggest to use instead?

If byte accesses are not going to be workable, then the only
answer _is_ a read-modify-write with working locking.

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