On 26/11/2021 08:40, Cédric Le Goater wrote:
On 11/26/21 09:01, Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
On 24/11/2021 22:00, Fabiano Rosas wrote:
Fabiano Rosas <faro...@linux.ibm.com> writes:
Hi all,
We have this bug in QEMU which indicates that we haven't been able to
run openbios on a 7450 cpu for quite a long time:
https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/86
OK:
$ ./qemu-system-ppc -serial mon:stdio -nographic -cpu 7410
>> =============================================================
>> OpenBIOS 1.1 [Nov 1 2021 20:36]
...
NOK:
$ ./qemu-system-ppc -serial mon:stdio -nographic -cpu 7450 -d int
Raise exception at fff08cc4 => 0000004e (00)
QEMU: Terminated
The actual issue is straightforward. There is a non-architected
feature that QEMU has enabled by default that openbios doesn't know
about. From the user manual:
"The MPC7540 has a set of implementation-specific registers,
exceptions, and instructions that facilitate very efficient software
searching of the page tables in memory for when software table
searching is enabled (HID0[STEN] = 1). This section describes those
resources and provides three example code sequences that can be used
in a MPC7540 system for an efficient search of the translation tables
in software. These three code sequences can be used as handlers for
the three exceptions requiring access to the PTEs in the page tables
in memory in this case-instruction TLB miss, data TLB miss on load,
and data TLB miss on store exceptions."
The current state:
1) QEMU does not check HID0[STEN] and makes the feature always enabled
by setting these cpus with the POWERPC_MMU_SOFT_74xx MMU model,
instead of the generic POWERPC_MMU_32B.
2) openbios does not recognize the PVRs for those cpus and also does
not have any handlers for the software TLB exceptions (vectors 0x1000,
0x1100, 0x1200).
Some assumptions (correct me if I'm wrong please):
- openbios is the only firmware we use for the following cpus: 7441,
7445, 7450, 7451, 7455, 7457, 7447, 7447a, 7448.
- without openbios, we cannot have a guest running on these cpus.
So to bring 7450 back to life we would need to either:
a) find another firmware/guest OS code that supports the feature;
b) implement the switching of the feature in QEMU and have the guest
code enable it only when supported. That would take some fiddling with
the MMU code to: merge POWERPC_MMU_SOFT_74xx into POWERPC_MMU_32B,
check the HID0[STEN] bit, figure out how to switch from HW TLB miss to
SW TLB miss on demand, block access to the TLBMISS register (and
others) when the feature is off, and so on;
c) leave the feature enabled in QEMU and implement the software TLB
miss handlers in openbios. The UM provides sample code, so this is
easy;
d) remove support for software TLB search for the 7450 family and
switch the cpus to the POWERPC_MMU_32B model. This is by far the
easiest solution, but could cause problems for any (which?) guest OS
code that actually uses the feature. All of the existing code for the
POWERPC_MMU_SOFT_74xx MMU model would probably be removed since it
would be dead code then;
Option (c) seemed to me like a good compromise so this is a patch
series for openbios doing that and also adding the necessary PVRs so
we can get a working guest with these cpus without too much effort.
I have also a patch for QEMU adding basic sanity check tests for the
7400 and 7450 families. I'll send that separately to the QEMU ml.
Fabiano Rosas (2):
ppc: Add support for MPC7450 software TLB miss interrupts
ppc: Add PVRs for the MPC7450 family
arch/ppc/qemu/init.c | 52 ++++++++++
arch/ppc/qemu/start.S | 236 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
2 files changed, 285 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
(Adding Mark because his email got somehow dropped from the original
message)
So with these patches in OpenBIOS we could get a bit further and call
into the Linux kernel using the same image as the one used for the
7400. However there seems to be no support for the 7450 software TLB in
the kernel. There are only handlers for the 4xx, 8xx and 603 which are
different code altogether. There's no mention of the TLBMISS and
PTEHI/LO registers in the code as well.
Do we know of any guest OS that implements the 7450 software TLB at
vectors 0x1000, 0x1100 and 0x1200? Otherwise replacing the
POWERPC_MMU_SOFT_74xx model with POWERPC_MMU_32B might be the only way
of getting an OS to run in the 7450 family.
My experience of anything other than the default CPUs used on the PPC Mac machines
is basically zero, so you're certainly in new territory :)
I could live with your proposed solution c) although it would be nice to guard the
extra vectors so that they remain uninitialised for the non-7450 CPUs. My main
question is if the kernel itself doesn't support software TLBs then does adding the
new code help at all?
yes, it helps to boot Linux and MacOS (9 and 10) on those CPUs but you still
need to replace the mmu model to POWERPC_MMU_32B in QEMU.
Or are you eventually planning for solution b) to improve QEMU's 7450 CPU emulation
for developers without real hardware?
b) would be nice to have but since we don't have any images using it, may
be it's time to drop support from QEMU.
Right. If we're doing this to say "I can boot a kernel with a 7450 cpu in QEMU" but
the implementation is different from real hardware, then I'm not sure what the real
value is. That effectively leaves option b) if someone is willing to do the work, or
as you say to simply remove the code from QEMU.
ATB,
Mark.