[PATCH] powerpc: add denormalisation exception handling for POWER6/7

[Kumar Gala]

On Jul 11, 2011, at 12:52 AM, Michael Neuling wrote:

> On POWER6 and POWER7 if the input operand to an instruction is a
> denormalised single precision binary floating we can take a
> denormalisation exception where it's expected that the hypervisor (HV=1)
> will fix up the inputs before the instruction is run.
> 
> This adds code to handle this denormalisation exception for POWER6 and
> POWER7.
> 
> It also add a CONFIG_PPC_DENORMALISATION option and sets it in
> pseries/ppc64_defconfig. 
> 
> This is useful on bare metal systems only.  Based on patch from Milton
> Miller.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Michael Neuling <mikey at neuling.org>
> 
> ---
> arch/powerpc/Kconfig                   |    7 +
> arch/powerpc/configs/ppc64_defconfig   |    1 
> arch/powerpc/configs/pseries_defconfig |    1 
> arch/powerpc/include/asm/ppc-opcode.h  |    2 
> arch/powerpc/include/asm/reg.h         |    1 
> arch/powerpc/kernel/exceptions-64s.S   |  125 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 6 files changed, 137 insertions(+)

Is it possible to run POWER6/7 systems in baremetal if you are not IBM?

Just wondering if this is useful to anyone but IBM.

- k