Re: MIPS: [raw_]smp_processor_id uses current_thread_info

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

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 02:27:26PM -0400, Randy MacLeod wrote:

> I'd like advice on changing the implementation of smp_processor_id on
> Cavium specifically and/or MIPS generally.
> 
> Currently we have: arch/mips/include/asm/smp.h
> #define raw_smp_processor_id() (current_thread_info()->cpu)
> 
> A co-worker has an issue where the current thread pointer is corrupted
> on a Cavium MIPS system running 2.6.14 (but the same code exists in 2.6.31).
> During the resulting panic() the kernel calls smp_processor_id()
> which dereferences the corrupt task pointer again - ouch. I've notice that
> other arches have raw_smp_processor_id() defined to
>  - a platform specific register read, or
>  - a percpu variable or
>  - have a hard_smp_processor_id() defined
> This last one is presumably for times when you don't trust the kernel
> data structures to be
> sane.

Dereferencing current_thread_info()->cpu is fairly likely to hit in the cache
so probably a single cycle operation.  raw_smp_processor_id() is also a
very common operation so you really don't want to change it to something
slower except for a debugging kernel.

If you have a good kernel stack pointer you can compute the thread pointer
from that:

	ori     $28, sp, _THREAD_MASK
	xori    $28, _THREAD_MASK

> I can create a patch that calls cvmx_get_core_num(); for cavium.
> Is there a more generic way to get the cpu number on MIPS?

raw_smp_processor_id() returns the processor ID as counted by Linux.  That
number does not necessarily match the firmware's numbering.

  Ralf