1Hollis Blanchard <hollis@austin.ibm.com> 25 Jun 2002 3 4This document describes the system (including self-modifying code) used in the 5PPC Linux kernel to support a variety of PowerPC CPUs without requiring 6compile-time selection. 7 8Early in the boot process the ppc32 kernel detects the current CPU type and 9chooses a set of features accordingly. Some examples include Altivec support, 10split instruction and data caches, and if the CPU supports the DOZE and NAP 11sleep modes. 12 13Detection of the feature set is simple. A list of processors can be found in 14arch/ppc/kernel/cputable.c. The PVR register is masked and compared with each 15value in the list. If a match is found, the cpu_features of cur_cpu_spec is 16assigned to the feature bitmask for this processor and a __setup_cpu function 17is called. 18 19C code may test 'cur_cpu_spec[smp_processor_id()]->cpu_features' for a 20particular feature bit. This is done in quite a few places, for example 21in ppc_setup_l2cr(). 22 23Implementing cpufeatures in assembly is a little more involved. There are 24several paths that are performance-critical and would suffer if an array 25index, structure dereference, and conditional branch were added. To avoid the 26performance penalty but still allow for runtime (rather than compile-time) CPU 27selection, unused code is replaced by 'nop' instructions. This nop'ing is 28based on CPU 0's capabilities, so a multi-processor system with non-identical 29processors will not work (but such a system would likely have other problems 30anyways). 31 32After detecting the processor type, the kernel patches out sections of code 33that shouldn't be used by writing nop's over it. Using cpufeatures requires 34just 2 macros (found in arch/powerpc/include/asm/cputable.h), as seen in head.S 35transfer_to_handler: 36 37 #ifdef CONFIG_ALTIVEC 38 BEGIN_FTR_SECTION 39 mfspr r22,SPRN_VRSAVE /* if G4, save vrsave register value */ 40 stw r22,THREAD_VRSAVE(r23) 41 END_FTR_SECTION_IFSET(CPU_FTR_ALTIVEC) 42 #endif /* CONFIG_ALTIVEC */ 43 44If CPU 0 supports Altivec, the code is left untouched. If it doesn't, both 45instructions are replaced with nop's. 46 47The END_FTR_SECTION macro has two simpler variations: END_FTR_SECTION_IFSET 48and END_FTR_SECTION_IFCLR. These simply test if a flag is set (in 49cur_cpu_spec[0]->cpu_features) or is cleared, respectively. These two macros 50should be used in the majority of cases. 51 52The END_FTR_SECTION macros are implemented by storing information about this 53code in the '__ftr_fixup' ELF section. When do_cpu_ftr_fixups 54(arch/ppc/kernel/misc.S) is invoked, it will iterate over the records in 55__ftr_fixup, and if the required feature is not present it will loop writing 56nop's from each BEGIN_FTR_SECTION to END_FTR_SECTION. 57