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Documentation / arm64 / cpu-feature-registers.txt


Based on kernel version 4.16.1. Page generated on 2018-04-09 11:52 EST.

1			ARM64 CPU Feature Registers
2			===========================
3	
4	Author: Suzuki K Poulose <suzuki.poulose@arm.com>
5	
6	
7	This file describes the ABI for exporting the AArch64 CPU ID/feature
8	registers to userspace. The availability of this ABI is advertised
9	via the HWCAP_CPUID in HWCAPs.
10	
11	1. Motivation
12	---------------
13	
14	The ARM architecture defines a set of feature registers, which describe
15	the capabilities of the CPU/system. Access to these system registers is
16	restricted from EL0 and there is no reliable way for an application to
17	extract this information to make better decisions at runtime. There is
18	limited information available to the application via HWCAPs, however
19	there are some issues with their usage.
20	
21	 a) Any change to the HWCAPs requires an update to userspace (e.g libc)
22	    to detect the new changes, which can take a long time to appear in
23	    distributions. Exposing the registers allows applications to get the
24	    information without requiring updates to the toolchains.
25	
26	 b) Access to HWCAPs is sometimes limited (e.g prior to libc, or
27	    when ld is initialised at startup time).
28	
29	 c) HWCAPs cannot represent non-boolean information effectively. The
30	    architecture defines a canonical format for representing features
31	    in the ID registers; this is well defined and is capable of
32	    representing all valid architecture variations.
33	
34	
35	2. Requirements
36	-----------------
37	
38	 a) Safety :
39	    Applications should be able to use the information provided by the
40	    infrastructure to run safely across the system. This has greater
41	    implications on a system with heterogeneous CPUs.
42	    The infrastructure exports a value that is safe across all the
43	    available CPU on the system.
44	
45	    e.g, If at least one CPU doesn't implement CRC32 instructions, while
46	    others do, we should report that the CRC32 is not implemented.
47	    Otherwise an application could crash when scheduled on the CPU
48	    which doesn't support CRC32.
49	
50	 b) Security :
51	    Applications should only be able to receive information that is
52	    relevant to the normal operation in userspace. Hence, some of the
53	    fields are masked out(i.e, made invisible) and their values are set to
54	    indicate the feature is 'not supported'. See Section 4 for the list
55	    of visible features. Also, the kernel may manipulate the fields
56	    based on what it supports. e.g, If FP is not supported by the
57	    kernel, the values could indicate that the FP is not available
58	    (even when the CPU provides it).
59	
60	 c) Implementation Defined Features
61	    The infrastructure doesn't expose any register which is
62	    IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED as per ARMv8-A Architecture.
63	
64	 d) CPU Identification :
65	    MIDR_EL1 is exposed to help identify the processor. On a
66	    heterogeneous system, this could be racy (just like getcpu()). The
67	    process could be migrated to another CPU by the time it uses the
68	    register value, unless the CPU affinity is set. Hence, there is no
69	    guarantee that the value reflects the processor that it is
70	    currently executing on. The REVIDR is not exposed due to this
71	    constraint, as REVIDR makes sense only in conjunction with the
72	    MIDR. Alternately, MIDR_EL1 and REVIDR_EL1 are exposed via sysfs
73	    at:
74	
75		/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu$ID/regs/identification/
76		                                              \- midr
77		                                              \- revidr
78	
79	3. Implementation
80	--------------------
81	
82	The infrastructure is built on the emulation of the 'MRS' instruction.
83	Accessing a restricted system register from an application generates an
84	exception and ends up in SIGILL being delivered to the process.
85	The infrastructure hooks into the exception handler and emulates the
86	operation if the source belongs to the supported system register space.
87	
88	The infrastructure emulates only the following system register space:
89		Op0=3, Op1=0, CRn=0, CRm=0,4,5,6,7
90	
91	(See Table C5-6 'System instruction encodings for non-Debug System
92	register accesses' in ARMv8 ARM DDI 0487A.h, for the list of
93	registers).
94	
95	The following rules are applied to the value returned by the
96	infrastructure:
97	
98	 a) The value of an 'IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED' field is set to 0.
99	 b) The value of a reserved field is populated with the reserved
100	    value as defined by the architecture.
101	 c) The value of a 'visible' field holds the system wide safe value
102	    for the particular feature (except for MIDR_EL1, see section 4).
103	 d) All other fields (i.e, invisible fields) are set to indicate
104	    the feature is missing (as defined by the architecture).
105	
106	4. List of registers with visible features
107	-------------------------------------------
108	
109	  1) ID_AA64ISAR0_EL1 - Instruction Set Attribute Register 0
110	     x--------------------------------------------------x
111	     | Name                         |  bits   | visible |
112	     |--------------------------------------------------|
113	     | RES0                         | [63-52] |    n    |
114	     |--------------------------------------------------|
115	     | FHM                          | [51-48] |    y    |
116	     |--------------------------------------------------|
117	     | DP                           | [47-44] |    y    |
118	     |--------------------------------------------------|
119	     | SM4                          | [43-40] |    y    |
120	     |--------------------------------------------------|
121	     | SM3                          | [39-36] |    y    |
122	     |--------------------------------------------------|
123	     | SHA3                         | [35-32] |    y    |
124	     |--------------------------------------------------|
125	     | RDM                          | [31-28] |    y    |
126	     |--------------------------------------------------|
127	     | RES0                         | [27-24] |    n    |
128	     |--------------------------------------------------|
129	     | ATOMICS                      | [23-20] |    y    |
130	     |--------------------------------------------------|
131	     | CRC32                        | [19-16] |    y    |
132	     |--------------------------------------------------|
133	     | SHA2                         | [15-12] |    y    |
134	     |--------------------------------------------------|
135	     | SHA1                         | [11-8]  |    y    |
136	     |--------------------------------------------------|
137	     | AES                          | [7-4]   |    y    |
138	     |--------------------------------------------------|
139	     | RES0                         | [3-0]   |    n    |
140	     x--------------------------------------------------x
141	
142	
143	  2) ID_AA64PFR0_EL1 - Processor Feature Register 0
144	     x--------------------------------------------------x
145	     | Name                         |  bits   | visible |
146	     |--------------------------------------------------|
147	     | RES0                         | [63-36] |    n    |
148	     |--------------------------------------------------|
149	     | SVE                          | [35-32] |    y    |
150	     |--------------------------------------------------|
151	     | RES0                         | [31-28] |    n    |
152	     |--------------------------------------------------|
153	     | GIC                          | [27-24] |    n    |
154	     |--------------------------------------------------|
155	     | AdvSIMD                      | [23-20] |    y    |
156	     |--------------------------------------------------|
157	     | FP                           | [19-16] |    y    |
158	     |--------------------------------------------------|
159	     | EL3                          | [15-12] |    n    |
160	     |--------------------------------------------------|
161	     | EL2                          | [11-8]  |    n    |
162	     |--------------------------------------------------|
163	     | EL1                          | [7-4]   |    n    |
164	     |--------------------------------------------------|
165	     | EL0                          | [3-0]   |    n    |
166	     x--------------------------------------------------x
167	
168	
169	  3) MIDR_EL1 - Main ID Register
170	     x--------------------------------------------------x
171	     | Name                         |  bits   | visible |
172	     |--------------------------------------------------|
173	     | Implementer                  | [31-24] |    y    |
174	     |--------------------------------------------------|
175	     | Variant                      | [23-20] |    y    |
176	     |--------------------------------------------------|
177	     | Architecture                 | [19-16] |    y    |
178	     |--------------------------------------------------|
179	     | PartNum                      | [15-4]  |    y    |
180	     |--------------------------------------------------|
181	     | Revision                     | [3-0]   |    y    |
182	     x--------------------------------------------------x
183	
184	   NOTE: The 'visible' fields of MIDR_EL1 will contain the value
185	   as available on the CPU where it is fetched and is not a system
186	   wide safe value.
187	
188	  4) ID_AA64ISAR1_EL1 - Instruction set attribute register 1
189	
190	     x--------------------------------------------------x
191	     | Name                         |  bits   | visible |
192	     |--------------------------------------------------|
193	     | LRCPC                        | [23-20] |    y    |
194	     |--------------------------------------------------|
195	     | FCMA                         | [19-16] |    y    |
196	     |--------------------------------------------------|
197	     | JSCVT                        | [15-12] |    y    |
198	     |--------------------------------------------------|
199	     | DPB                          | [3-0]   |    y    |
200	     x--------------------------------------------------x
201	
202	Appendix I: Example
203	---------------------------
204	
205	/*
206	 * Sample program to demonstrate the MRS emulation ABI.
207	 *
208	 * Copyright (C) 2015-2016, ARM Ltd
209	 *
210	 * Author: Suzuki K Poulose <suzuki.poulose@arm.com>
211	 *
212	 * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
213	 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
214	 * published by the Free Software Foundation.
215	 *
216	 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
217	 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
218	 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
219	 * GNU General Public License for more details.
220	 * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
221	 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
222	 * published by the Free Software Foundation.
223	 *
224	 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
225	 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
226	 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
227	 * GNU General Public License for more details.
228	 */
229	
230	#include <asm/hwcap.h>
231	#include <stdio.h>
232	#include <sys/auxv.h>
233	
234	#define get_cpu_ftr(id) ({					\
235			unsigned long __val;				\
236			asm("mrs %0, "#id : "=r" (__val));		\
237			printf("%-20s: 0x%016lx\n", #id, __val);	\
238		})
239	
240	int main(void)
241	{
242	
243		if (!(getauxval(AT_HWCAP) & HWCAP_CPUID)) {
244			fputs("CPUID registers unavailable\n", stderr);
245			return 1;
246		}
247	
248		get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64ISAR0_EL1);
249		get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64ISAR1_EL1);
250		get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64MMFR0_EL1);
251		get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64MMFR1_EL1);
252		get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64PFR0_EL1);
253		get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64PFR1_EL1);
254		get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64DFR0_EL1);
255		get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64DFR1_EL1);
256	
257		get_cpu_ftr(MIDR_EL1);
258		get_cpu_ftr(MPIDR_EL1);
259		get_cpu_ftr(REVIDR_EL1);
260	
261	#if 0
262		/* Unexposed register access causes SIGILL */
263		get_cpu_ftr(ID_MMFR0_EL1);
264	#endif
265	
266		return 0;
267	}
268	
269	
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