Re: [Qemu-ppc] [RFC PATCH 03/26] target/ppc/POWER9: add POWERPC_EXCP_POWER9

[Cédric Le Goater]

On 07/10/2017 11:00 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> On Mon, 2017-07-10 at 14:49 +0200, Cédric Le Goater wrote:
>> On 07/10/2017 12:26 PM, David Gibson wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jul 05, 2017 at 07:13:16PM +0200, Cédric Le Goater wrote:
>>>> Prepare ground for the new exception model XIVE of POWER9.
>>>
>>> I'm a bit confused by this.  The excp_model is about the CPU core's
>>> irq model, not the external irq controller's.
>>
>> yes this is true, but the POWER9 CPU is the only criteria we have 
>> to distinguish a machine supporting XIVE and XICS from one only 
>> supporting XICS.
> 
> Why ? I don't understand.
> 
> We do want an EXCP_POWER9 for other things, like the fact that we have
> a separate interrupt input for hypervisor, with associated vectors
> etc...  but that still doesn't relate to what interrupt controller is
> there.
> 
>> My idea was to use this flag to activate the OV5_XIVE_EXPLOIT bit 
>> in ibm,arch-vec-5-platform-support ov5_platform, like this is done
>> for the MMU. See spapr_dt_ov5_platform_support()
> 
> I disagree, the MMU is in the core, the XIVE isn't. It would be
> possibly to make a P9 core if a XICS in theory :-)

ok. I understand. We could even "build" one in QEMU. HW would be 
another story ... 

So should XIVE support be a sPAPR machine property only enabled if 
'cpu_model' matches "POWER9.*" ? The XICS/XIVE initialization is done 
quite early in the machine init so this needs some checks.

>>> Now.. I could imagine the POWER9 having a different core model that
>>> came along with XIVE, but I can't see this new model being used for
>>> anything anywhere in the rest of the series.
>>
>> See patch 26. But, maybe, I am taking a shortcut and we need another
>> family of flags. 
> 
> Or just some kind of enum for the interrupt controller, how do we do
> with OpenPIC vs. XICS already ? Old POWER3 had OpenPIC.

AFAICT, we don't have such a CPU in QEMU/ppc. 


We could use some extra flag to change the ICS behavior. The path I am
taking duplicates the ICS code but in real, we only need to change the
irq handlers. 

Thanks,

C.