[PATCH v5 03/18] ACPI: processor: Register deferred CPUs from acpi_processor_get_info()

[Jonathan Cameron]

On Sat, 13 Apr 2024 01:23:48 +0200
Thomas Gleixner <tglx at linutronix.de> wrote:

> Russell!
> 
> On Fri, Apr 12 2024 at 22:52, Russell King (Oracle) wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 12, 2024 at 10:54:32PM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:  
> >> > As for the cpu locking, I couldn't find anything in arch_register_cpu()
> >> > that depends on the cpu_maps_update stuff nor needs the cpus_write_lock
> >> > being taken - so I've no idea why the "make_present" case takes these
> >> > locks.  
> >> 
> >> Anything which updates a CPU mask, e.g. cpu_present_mask, after early
> >> boot must hold the appropriate write locks. Otherwise it would be
> >> possible to online a CPU which just got marked present, but the
> >> registration has not completed yet.  
> >
> > Yes. As far as I've been able to determine, arch_register_cpu()
> > doesn't manipulate any of the CPU masks. All it seems to be doing
> > is initialising the struct cpu, registering the embedded struct
> > device, and setting up the sysfs links to its NUMA node.
> >
> > There is nothing obvious in there which manipulates any CPU masks, and
> > this is rather my fundamental point when I said "I couldn't find
> > anything in arch_register_cpu() that depends on ...".
> >
> > If there is something, then comments in the code would be a useful aid
> > because it's highly non-obvious where such a manipulation is located,
> > and hence why the locks are necessary.  
> 
> acpi_processor_hotadd_init()
> ...
>          acpi_map_cpu(pr->handle, pr->phys_id, pr->acpi_id, &pr->id);
> 
> That ends up in fiddling with cpu_present_mask.
> 
> I grant you that arch_register_cpu() is not, but it might rely on the
> external locking too. I could not be bothered to figure that out.
> 
> >> Define "real hotplug" :)
> >> 
> >> Real physical hotplug does not really exist. That's at least true for
> >> x86, where the physical hotplug support was chased for a while, but
> >> never ended up in production.
> >> 
> >> Though virtualization happily jumped on it to hot add/remove CPUs
> >> to/from a guest.
> >> 
> >> There are limitations to this and we learned it the hard way on X86. At
> >> the end we came up with the following restrictions:
> >> 
> >>     1) All possible CPUs have to be advertised at boot time via firmware
> >>        (ACPI/DT/whatever) independent of them being present at boot time
> >>        or not.
> >> 
> >>        That guarantees proper sizing and ensures that associations
> >>        between hardware entities and software representations and the
> >>        resulting topology are stable for the lifetime of a system.
> >> 
> >>        It is really required to know the full topology of the system at
> >>        boot time especially with hybrid CPUs where some of the cores
> >>        have hyperthreading and the others do not.
> >> 
> >> 
> >>     2) Hot add can only mark an already registered (possible) CPU
> >>        present. Adding non-registered CPUs after boot is not possible.
> >> 
> >>        The CPU must have been registered in #1 already to ensure that
> >>        the system topology does not suddenly change in an incompatible
> >>        way at run-time.
> >> 
> >> The same restriction would apply to real physical hotplug. I don't think
> >> that's any different for ARM64 or any other architecture.  
> >
> > This makes me wonder whether the Arm64 has been barking up the wrong
> > tree then, and whether the whole "present" vs "enabled" thing comes
> > from a misunderstanding as far as a CPU goes.
> >
> > However, there is a big difference between the two. On x86, a processor
> > is just a processor. On Arm64, a "processor" is a slice of the system
> > (includes the interrupt controller, PMUs etc) and we must enumerate
> > those even when the processor itself is not enabled. This is the whole
> > reason there's a difference between "present" and "enabled" and why
> > there's a difference between x86 cpu hotplug and arm64 cpu hotplug.
> > The processor never actually goes away in arm64, it's just prevented
> > from being used.  
> 
> It's the same on X86 at least in the physical world.

There were public calls on this via the Linaro Open Discussions group,
so I can talk a little about how we ended up here.  Note that (in my
opinion) there is zero chance of this changing - it took us well over
a year to get to this conclusion.  So if we ever want ARM vCPU HP
we need to work within these constraints. 

The ARM architecture folk (the ones defining the ARM ARM, relevant ACPI
specs etc, not the kernel maintainers) are determined that they want
to retain the option to do real physical CPU hotplug in the future
with all the necessary work around dynamic interrupt controller
initialization, debug and many other messy corners.

Thus anything defined had to be structured in a way that was 'different'
from that.

I don't mind the proposed flattening of the 2 paths if the ARM kernel
maintainers are fine with it but it will remove the distinctions and
we will need to be very careful with the CPU masks - we can't handle
them the same as x86 does.

I'll get on with doing that, but do need input from Will / Catalin / James.
There are some quirks that need calling out as it's not quite a simple
as it appears from a high level.

Another part of that long discussion established that there is userspace
(Android IIRC) in which the CPU present mask must include all CPUs
at boot. To change that would be userspace ABI breakage so we can't
do that.  Hence the dance around adding yet another mask to allow the
OS to understand which CPUs are 'present' but not possible to online.

Flattening the two paths removes any distinction between calls that
are for real hotplug and those that are for this online capable path.
As a side note, the indicating bit for these flows is defined in ACPI
for x86 from ACPI 6.3 as a flag in Processor Local APIC
(the ARM64 definition is a cut and paste of that text).  So someone
is interested in this distinction on x86. I can't say who but if
you have a mantis account you can easily follow the history and it
might be instructive to not everyone considering the current x86
flow the right way to do it.

Jonathan


> 
> Thanks,
> 
>         tglx
>