[PATCH Linux] powerpc: add documentation for HWCAPs

Florian Weimer fweimer at redhat.com
Tue May 24 19:52:00 AEST 2022


* Nicholas Piggin:

> +2. Facilities
> +-------------
> +The Power ISA uses the term "facility" to describe a class of instructions,
> +registers, interrupts, etc. The presence or absence of a facility indicates
> +whether this class is available to be used, but the specifics depend on the
> +ISA version. For example, if the VSX facility is available, the VSX
> +instructions that can be used differ between the v3.0B and v3.1B ISA
> +verstions.

The 2.07 ISA manual also has categories.  ISA 3.0 made a lot of things
mandatory.  It may make sense to clarify that feature bits for mandatory
aspects of the ISA are still set, to help with backwards compatibility.

Thanks,
Florian



More information about the Linuxppc-dev mailing list