--- /dev/null
+ ARM64 CPU Feature Registers
+ ===========================
+
+Author: Suzuki K Poulose <suzuki.poulose@arm.com>
+
+
+This file describes the ABI for exporting the AArch64 CPU ID/feature
+registers to userspace. The availability of this ABI is advertised
+via the HWCAP_CPUID in HWCAPs.
+
+1. Motivation
+---------------
+
+The ARM architecture defines a set of feature registers, which describe
+the capabilities of the CPU/system. Access to these system registers is
+restricted from EL0 and there is no reliable way for an application to
+extract this information to make better decisions at runtime. There is
+limited information available to the application via HWCAPs, however
+there are some issues with their usage.
+
+ a) Any change to the HWCAPs requires an update to userspace (e.g libc)
+ to detect the new changes, which can take a long time to appear in
+ distributions. Exposing the registers allows applications to get the
+ information without requiring updates to the toolchains.
+
+ b) Access to HWCAPs is sometimes limited (e.g prior to libc, or
+ when ld is initialised at startup time).
+
+ c) HWCAPs cannot represent non-boolean information effectively. The
+ architecture defines a canonical format for representing features
+ in the ID registers; this is well defined and is capable of
+ representing all valid architecture variations.
+
+
+2. Requirements
+-----------------
+
+ a) Safety :
+ Applications should be able to use the information provided by the
+ infrastructure to run safely across the system. This has greater
+ implications on a system with heterogeneous CPUs.
+ The infrastructure exports a value that is safe across all the
+ available CPU on the system.
+
+ e.g, If at least one CPU doesn't implement CRC32 instructions, while
+ others do, we should report that the CRC32 is not implemented.
+ Otherwise an application could crash when scheduled on the CPU
+ which doesn't support CRC32.
+
+ b) Security :
+ Applications should only be able to receive information that is
+ relevant to the normal operation in userspace. Hence, some of the
+ fields are masked out(i.e, made invisible) and their values are set to
+ indicate the feature is 'not supported'. See Section 4 for the list
+ of visible features. Also, the kernel may manipulate the fields
+ based on what it supports. e.g, If FP is not supported by the
+ kernel, the values could indicate that the FP is not available
+ (even when the CPU provides it).
+
+ c) Implementation Defined Features
+ The infrastructure doesn't expose any register which is
+ IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED as per ARMv8-A Architecture.
+
+ d) CPU Identification :
+ MIDR_EL1 is exposed to help identify the processor. On a
+ heterogeneous system, this could be racy (just like getcpu()). The
+ process could be migrated to another CPU by the time it uses the
+ register value, unless the CPU affinity is set. Hence, there is no
+ guarantee that the value reflects the processor that it is
+ currently executing on. The REVIDR is not exposed due to this
+ constraint, as REVIDR makes sense only in conjunction with the
+ MIDR. Alternately, MIDR_EL1 and REVIDR_EL1 are exposed via sysfs
+ at:
+
+ /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu$ID/regs/identification/
+ \- midr
+ \- revidr
+
+3. Implementation
+--------------------
+
+The infrastructure is built on the emulation of the 'MRS' instruction.
+Accessing a restricted system register from an application generates an
+exception and ends up in SIGILL being delivered to the process.
+The infrastructure hooks into the exception handler and emulates the
+operation if the source belongs to the supported system register space.
+
+The infrastructure emulates only the following system register space:
+ Op0=3, Op1=0, CRn=0, CRm=0,4,5,6,7
+
+(See Table C5-6 'System instruction encodings for non-Debug System
+register accesses' in ARMv8 ARM DDI 0487A.h, for the list of
+registers).
+
+The following rules are applied to the value returned by the
+infrastructure:
+
+ a) The value of an 'IMPLEMENTATION DEFINED' field is set to 0.
+ b) The value of a reserved field is populated with the reserved
+ value as defined by the architecture.
+ c) The value of a 'visible' field holds the system wide safe value
+ for the particular feature (except for MIDR_EL1, see section 4).
+ d) All other fields (i.e, invisible fields) are set to indicate
+ the feature is missing (as defined by the architecture).
+
+4. List of registers with visible features
+-------------------------------------------
+
+ 1) ID_AA64ISAR0_EL1 - Instruction Set Attribute Register 0
+ x--------------------------------------------------x
+ | Name | bits | visible |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | RES0 | [63-32] | n |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | RDM | [31-28] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | ATOMICS | [23-20] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | CRC32 | [19-16] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | SHA2 | [15-12] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | SHA1 | [11-8] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | AES | [7-4] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | RES0 | [3-0] | n |
+ x--------------------------------------------------x
+
+
+ 2) ID_AA64PFR0_EL1 - Processor Feature Register 0
+ x--------------------------------------------------x
+ | Name | bits | visible |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | RES0 | [63-28] | n |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | GIC | [27-24] | n |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | AdvSIMD | [23-20] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | FP | [19-16] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | EL3 | [15-12] | n |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | EL2 | [11-8] | n |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | EL1 | [7-4] | n |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | EL0 | [3-0] | n |
+ x--------------------------------------------------x
+
+
+ 3) MIDR_EL1 - Main ID Register
+ x--------------------------------------------------x
+ | Name | bits | visible |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | Implementer | [31-24] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | Variant | [23-20] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | Architecture | [19-16] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | PartNum | [15-4] | y |
+ |--------------------------------------------------|
+ | Revision | [3-0] | y |
+ x--------------------------------------------------x
+
+ NOTE: The 'visible' fields of MIDR_EL1 will contain the value
+ as available on the CPU where it is fetched and is not a system
+ wide safe value.
+
+Appendix I: Example
+---------------------------
+
+/*
+ * Sample program to demonstrate the MRS emulation ABI.
+ *
+ * Copyright (C) 2015-2016, ARM Ltd
+ *
+ * Author: Suzuki K Poulose <suzuki.poulose@arm.com>
+ *
+ * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+ * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
+ * published by the Free Software Foundation.
+ *
+ * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+ * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+ * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
+ * GNU General Public License for more details.
+ * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+ * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
+ * published by the Free Software Foundation.
+ *
+ * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+ * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+ * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
+ * GNU General Public License for more details.
+ */
+
+#include <asm/hwcap.h>
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <sys/auxv.h>
+
+#define get_cpu_ftr(id) ({ \
+ unsigned long __val; \
+ asm("mrs %0, "#id : "=r" (__val)); \
+ printf("%-20s: 0x%016lx\n", #id, __val); \
+ })
+
+int main(void)
+{
+
+ if (!(getauxval(AT_HWCAP) & HWCAP_CPUID)) {
+ fputs("CPUID registers unavailable\n", stderr);
+ return 1;
+ }
+
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64ISAR0_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64ISAR1_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64MMFR0_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64MMFR1_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64PFR0_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64PFR1_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64DFR0_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_AA64DFR1_EL1);
+
+ get_cpu_ftr(MIDR_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(MPIDR_EL1);
+ get_cpu_ftr(REVIDR_EL1);
+
+#if 0
+ /* Unexposed register access causes SIGILL */
+ get_cpu_ftr(ID_MMFR0_EL1);
+#endif
+
+ return 0;
+}
+
+
+