Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH RFC 1/3] accel/tcg: allow to invalidate a write TLB entry immediately

[David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>]

On 27.09.2017 19:48, Richard Henderson wrote:
> On 09/27/2017 10:00 AM, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> Background: s390x implements Low-Address Protection (LAP). If LAP is
>> enabled, writing to effective addresses (before any transaltion)
>> 0-511 and 4096-4607 triggers a protection exception.
>>
>> So we have subpage protection on the first two pages of every address
>> space (where the lowcore - the CPU private data resides).
>>
>> By immediately invalidating the write entry but allowing the caller to
>> continue, we force every write access onto these first two pages into
>> the slow path. we will get a tlb fault with the specific accessed
>> addresses and can then evaluate if protection applies or not.
>>
>> We have to make sure to ignore the invalid bit if tlb_fill() succeeds.
> 
> This is similar to a scheme I proposed to PMM wrt handling ARM v8M translation.
>  Reusing TLB_INVALID_MASK would appear to work, but I wonder if it wouldn't be
> clearer to use another bit.  I believe I had proposed a TLB_FORCE_SLOW_MASK.

The only downside of another bit is that we have to duplicate all
checks. Using TLB_INVALID_MASK avoids this change (because it simply works).

Of course, we could come up with something as simple as

#define TLB_INVALID_MASK (TLB_INVALID | TLB_FORCE_SLOW)

and fixup the few places where TLB_INVALID_MASK really just has to be
TLB_INVALID.

Have no strong opinion on this. This way requires minimal changes.

> 
> Thoughts, Peter?
> 
> 
> r~
> 


-- 

Thanks,

David