Re: watch exception only for kseg0 addresses..?

[Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>]

On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 04:47:33PM +0100, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:

> > MIPS64 extends that to also support instruction address matches; the
> > granularity can be set anywhere from 8 bytes to 4kB; in addition ASID
> > matching and a global bit can be used for matching.  A MIPS64 CPU can
> > support anywhere from 0 to 4 such watch registers.
> 
>  Actually up to eight -- for all dmfc0/dmtc0 3-bit "sel" values, if I read
> it correctly.

Correct but I don't know of any CPU that actually uses more than 4 of the
possible 8 sets atm.  So we're both right :)

> > The global bit stuff would only be useful for in-kernel use, I think.  The
> > ASID thing could be used to implement watchpoints for an entire process, not
> > just per thread though I doubt there is much use for something like that.
> 
>  Well, there are two options only -- either use global matching or ASID
> matching.  What else would you expect?  Do you mean lazy vs immediate
> switching? 

Basically there would be two possibilities, associate the debugging state
of a process with it's thread_struct or with it's mm_struct.  The latter
would have a little less impact on the context switching performance,
the first be a bit more flexible.

  Ralf