Re: how to check for "optional" ppc chip features (MSR_BE)

[Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>]

Roland McGrath writes:

> Yeah, all that stuff I could figure out as needed.  What I really meant
> was, where is the big official table of which chips behave which ways that
> you base all code that on?  Actually, I don't really care as long as you
> all are happy to be responsible for figuring out what matters.  With the
> patch I posted to use MSR_BE, I took Kumar Gala's word as gospel that all
> the chips on which we use MSR_SE also have MSR_BE.  If that's not right,
> then I hope you'd like to pick a feature bit, populate the tables, etc.,
> and fix the definition of arch_has_block_step() as appropriate.

It turns out that the 601 doesn't support MSR_BE.  It looks like all
the "classic" 32-bit implementations after that (603, 604, 7xx, 7xxx)
implemented BE, as do POWER3 and RS64.  I'll check the later 64-bit
processors -- I think they all implement BE.  4xx and Book E have it
in a different form.  I'll let Kumar find out about 8xx and 82xx.

So it looks like we need to define a new feature bit to mean "supports
block-step".  Is this something that userspace will expect to be told
about via the AT_HWCAP entry in the aux vector?

Paul.