Re: [PATCH RFCv2 00/20] kvm/arm: Introduce a customizable aarch64 KVM host model

[Cornelia Huck]

On Fri, Dec 20 2024, Kashyap Chamarthy <kchamart@redhat.com> wrote:

> Related tangent on CPU feature discoverability on ARM:
>
> Speaking of "Neoverse-N1", looking at a system that I have access to,
> the `lscpu` output does not say anything about who the integrator is; it
> only says:
>
>     ...
>     Vendor ID:                ARM
>     Model name:             Neoverse-N1
>     ...
>
> I realize, `lscpu` displays only whatever the kernel knows.  Nothing in
> `dmidecode` either.
>
> Also, it looks like there's no equivalent of a "CPUID" instruction (I
> realize it is x86-specific) on ARM.  Although, I came across a Google
> Git repo that seems to implement a bespoke, "aarch64_cpuid".  From a
> what I see, it seems to fetch the "Main ID Register" (MIDR_EL1) - I
> don't know enough about it to understand its implications:
>
>     https://github.com/google/cpu_features/blob/main/src/impl_aarch64_cpuid.c

My guess is that this is mostly for "we have code that looks for a cpuid
like on x86, let's provide some code on arm that gives something that is
at least somewhat useful."

For "CPU feature discoverability", I don't think that there's any way
other than looking at the actual id registers. It would be nice if you
could at least know that "there are some <unspecified> differences in
features" by comparing MIDR/REVIDR/AIDR, but that's not the case IIRC?

[Anyway, I'm off for the year :)]