Re: [PATCH v13 00/48] arm64: Support for Arm CCA in KVM

Alper Gun
2026-04-14T21:40:56Z

On Wed, Mar 18, 2026 at 8:54 AM Steven Price <steven.price@arm.com> wrote:
>
> This series adds support for running protected VMs using KVM under the
> Arm Confidential Compute Architecture (CCA).
>
> New major version number! This now targets RMM v2.0-bet0[1]. And unlike
> for Linux this represents a significant change.
>
> RMM v2.0 brings with it the ability to configure the RMM to have the
> same page size as the host (so no more RMM_PAGE_SIZE and dealing with
> granules being different from host pages). It also introduces range
> based APIs for many operations which should be more efficient and
> simplifies the code in places.
>
> The handling of the GIC has changed, so the system registers are used to
> pass the GIC state rather than memory. This means fewer changes to the
> KVM code as it looks much like a normal VM in this respect.
>
> And of course the new uAPI introduced in the previous v12 posting is
> retained so that also remains simplified compared to earlier postings.
>
> The RMM support for v2.0 is still early and so this series includes a
> few hacks to ease the integration. Of note are that there are some RMM
> v1.0 SMCs added to paper over areas where the RMM implementation isn't
> quite ready for v2.0, and "SROs" (see below) are deferred to the final
> patch in the series.
>
> The PMU in RMM v2.0 requires more handling on the RMM-side (and
> therefore simplifies the implementation on Linux), but this isn't quite
> ready yet. The Linux side is implemented (but untested).
>
> PSCI still requires the VMM to provide the "target" REC for operations
> that affect another vCPU. This is likely to change in a future version
> of the specification. There's also a desire to force PSCI to be handled
> in the VMM for realm guests - this isn't implemented yet as I'm waiting
> for the dust to settle on the RMM interface first.
>
> Stateful RMI Operations
> -----------------------
>
> The RMM v2.0 spec brings a new concept of Stateful RMI Operations (SROs)
> which allow the RMM to complete an operation over several SMC calls and
> requesting/returning memory to the host. This has the benefit of
> allowing interrupts to be handled in the middle of an operation (by
> returning to the host to handle the interrupt without completing the
> operation) and enables the RMM to dynamically allocate memory for
> internal tracking purposes. One example of this is RMI_REC_CREATE no
> longer needs "auxiliary granules" provided upfront but can request the
> memory needed during the RMI_REC_CREATE operation.
>
> There are a fairly large number of operations that are defined as SROs
> in the specification, but current both Linux and RMM only have support
> for RMI_REC_CREATE and RMI_REC_DESTROY. There a number of TODOs/FIXMEs
> in the code where support is missing.
>
> Given the early stage support for this, the SRO handling is all confined
> to the final patch. This patch can be dropped to return to a pre-SRO
> state (albeit a mixture of RMM v1.0 and v2.0 APIs) for testing purposes.
>
> A future posting will reorder the series to move the generic SRO support
> to an early patch and will implement the proper support for this in all
> RMI SMCs.
>
> One aspect of SROs which is not yet well captured is that in some
> circumstances the Linux kernel will need to call an SRO call in a
> context where memory allocation is restricted (e.g. because a spinlock
> is held). In this case the intention is that the SRO will be cancelled,
> the spinlock dropped so the memory allocation can be completed, and then
> the SRO restarted (obviously after rechecking the state that the
> spinlock was protecting). For this reason the code stores the memory
> allocations within a struct rmi_sro_state object - see the final patch
> for more details.
>
> This series is based on v7.0-rc1. It is also available as a git
> repository:
>
> https://gitlab.arm.com/linux-arm/linux-cca cca-host/v13
>
>

Hi Steven,

I have a question regarding host kexec and kdump scenarios, and
whether there is any plan to make them work in this initial series.

Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP both have a firmware shutdown command that
is invoked during the kexec or panic code paths to safely bypass
hardware memory protections and boot into the new kernel. As far as
I know, there is no similar global teardown command available for
the RMM.

What is the roadmap for supporting both general kexec and
more specifically kdump (panic) scenarios with CCA?

Thanks,
Alper