powerpc Linux scv support and scv system call ABI proposal

[Segher Boessenkool]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 05:04:49PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Segher Boessenkool:
> 
> >> > I don't think we can save LR in a regular register around the system
> >> > call, explicitly in the inline asm statement, because we still have to
> >> > generate proper unwinding information using CFI directives, something
> >> > that you cannot do from within the asm statement.
> >
> > Why not?
> 
> As far as I knowm there isn't a CFI directive that allows us to restore
> the CFI state at the end of the inline assembly.  If we say that LR is
> stored in a different register than what the rest of the function uses,
> that would lead to incorrect CFI after the exit of the inline assembler
> fragment.
> 
> At least that's what I think.  Compilers aren't really my thing.

.cfi_restore?  Or .cfi_remember_state / .cfi_restore_state, that is
probably easiest in inline assembler.

> >> > GCC does not model the condition registers,
> >
> > Huh?  It does model the condition register, as 8 registers in GCC's
> > internal model (one each for CR0..CR7).
> 
> But GCC doesn't expose them as integers to C code, so you can't do much
> without them.

Sure, it doesn't expose any other registers directly, either.

> >> > We don't have an ELFv2 ABI for 32-bit.  I doubt it makes sense to
> >> > provide an ELFv1 port for this given that it's POWER9-specific.
> >
> > We *do* have a 32-bit LE ABI.  And ELFv1 is not 32-bit either.  Please
> > don't confuse these things :-)
> >
> > The 64-bit LE kernel does not really support 32-bit userland (or BE
> > userland), *that* is what you want to say.
> 
> Sorry for the confusion.  Is POWER9 running kernels which are not 64-bit
> LE really a thing in practice, though?

Linux only really supports 64-bit LE userland on p9.  Anything else is
not supported.

> >> > From the glibc perspective, the major question is how we handle run-time
> >> > selection of the system call instruction sequence.
> >
> > Well, if it is inlined you don't have this problem either!  :-)
> 
> How so?  We would have to put the conditional sequence into all inline
> system calls, of course.

Ah, if you support older systems in your program as well, gotcha.  That
is not the usual case (just like people use -mcpu=power9 frequently,
which means the resulting program will not run on any older CPU).


Segher