[PATCH] ARM: Add SWP/SWPB emulation for ARMv7 processors (v4)

[catalin.marinas@arm.com (Catalin Marinas)]

On Thu, 2010-01-14 at 13:07 +0000, Leif Lindholm wrote:
> The SWP instruction was deprecated in the ARMv6 architecture, superseded
> by the LDREX/STREX family of instructions for
> load-linked/store-conditional operations. The ARMv7 multiprocessing
> extensions mandate that SWP/SWPB instructions are treated as undefined
> from reset, with the ability to enable them through the System Control
> Register SW bit.
> 
> This patch adds the alternative solution to emulate the SWP and SWPB
> instructions using LDREX/STREX sequences, and log statistics to
> /proc/cpu/swp_emulation. To correctly deal with copy-on-write, it also
> modifies cpu_v7_set_pte_ext to change the mappings to priviliged RO when
> user RO.

Just a thought - could we not add another kuser helper in the vectors
page that does this? Your exception trapping code would set regs->ARM_lr
to the next instruction following SWP and regs->ARM_pc to the helper. 

This way you don't have to worry about handling another exception from
inside the kernel or modifying set_pte_ext.

-- 
Catalin