Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH for 4.2] target/arm: generate a custom MIDR for -cpu max

["Alex Bennée" <alex.bennee@linaro.org>]

Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org> writes:

> On Mon, 22 Jul 2019 at 12:19, Alex Bennée <alex.bennee@linaro.org> wrote:
>>
>> While most features are now detected by probing the ID_* registers
>> kernels can (and do) use MIDR_EL1 for working out of they have to
>> apply errata. This can trip up warnings in the kernel as it tries to
>> work out if it should apply workarounds to features that don't
>> actually exist in the reported CPU type.
>>
>> Avoid this problem by synthesising our own MIDR value using the
>> reserved value of 0 for the implementer and encoding the moving feast
>> that is the QEMU version string into the other fields.
>
> Exposing the QEMU_VERSION_* information to the guest is
> usually not a good plan. For instance it means that the
> MIDR will mysteriously change if you save a VM on one
> version of QEMU and restore it on another.

Given the mutability of -cpu max that is probably a good thing?

> We went through
> a while back carefully removing places where we'd exposed
> the version number to the guest (have a look at the
> qemu_hw_version() stuff which has to jump through hoops
> so that old versioned machines like pc-1.5 report the
> old "1.5" version number, and any QEMU 2.5 and above
> now reports "2.5+"...)

Well I guess we could do:

  cpu->midr = FIELD_DP64(0, MIDR_EL1, ARCHITECTURE, 0xf)

but any kernel that attempts to apply fixups for a 0x0 implementer is
asking for trouble anyway. I assume it's unlikely ARM would assign QEMU
an implementer code!

>
> thanks
> -- PMM


--
Alex Bennée