How to use SPE on MPC8541

[Gérard Guével]

> You say the application runs, right?  So what made you check the SPE
> bit state?  The kernel keeps SPE disabled by default so it doesn't
> have to save the upper 32 bits of the registers every context
> switch.  When a process uses SPE for the first time, an exception is
> triggered, the kernel enables SPE for that process, and then that
> process should be able to use SPE every time it gets cpu time.
>
> How are you determining that the SPE bit is not set?  Is your
> application not executing the SPE instructions?
>
> Andy

Yes the application runs. I wrote a mini driver with an ioctl which
performs a mfmsr() call and  returns the value to the user application.
I called this ioctl at several times before and after executing SPE code.
I already tried to manually force the SPE bit with another ioctl which
performs a enable_kernel_spe() call. The bit SPE is right set at this time
but disappears later.

I don't know if using ioctls is a right way to check the bit.

Any idea ?
Thanks
Gérard