Re: [PATCH v3] riscv: Use PUD/P4D/PGD pages for the linear mapping

[Rob Herring <robh@kernel.org>]

On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 07:02:04AM +0100, Alexandre Ghiti wrote:
> During the early page table creation, we used to set the mapping for
> PAGE_OFFSET to the kernel load address: but the kernel load address is
> always offseted by PMD_SIZE which makes it impossible to use PUD/P4D/PGD
> pages as this physical address is not aligned on PUD/P4D/PGD size (whereas
> PAGE_OFFSET is).
> 
> But actually we don't have to establish this mapping (ie set va_pa_offset)
> that early in the boot process because:
> 
> - first, setup_vm installs a temporary kernel mapping and among other
>   things, discovers the system memory,
> - then, setup_vm_final creates the final kernel mapping and takes
>   advantage of the discovered system memory to create the linear
>   mapping.
> 
> During the first phase, we don't know the start of the system memory and
> then until the second phase is finished, we can't use the linear mapping at
> all and phys_to_virt/virt_to_phys translations must not be used because it
> would result in a different translation from the 'real' one once the final
> mapping is installed.
> 
> So here we simply delay the initialization of va_pa_offset to after the
> system memory discovery. But to make sure noone uses the linear mapping
> before, we add some guard in the DEBUG_VIRTUAL config.
> 
> Finally we can use PUD/P4D/PGD hugepages when possible, which will result
> in a better TLB utilization.
> 
> Note that we rely on the firmware to protect itself using PMP.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Alexandre Ghiti <alexghiti@rivosinc.com>
> ---
> 
> v3:
> - Change the comment about initrd_start VA conversion so that it fits
>   ARM64 and RISCV64 (and others in the future if needed), as suggested
>   by Rob
> 
> v2:
> - Add a comment on why RISCV64 does not need to set initrd_start/end that
>   early in the boot process, as asked by Rob
> 
> Note that this patch is rebased on top of:
> [PATCH v1 1/1] riscv: mm: call best_map_size many times during linear-mapping
> 
>  arch/riscv/include/asm/page.h | 16 ++++++++++++++++
>  arch/riscv/mm/init.c          | 25 +++++++++++++++++++------
>  arch/riscv/mm/physaddr.c      | 16 ++++++++++++++++
>  drivers/of/fdt.c              | 11 ++++++-----

Acked-by: Rob Herring <robh@kernel.org> # DT bits

>  4 files changed, 57 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)