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authorWill Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>2013-06-12 16:28:04 +0100
committerCatalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>2013-09-03 10:18:02 +0100
commitd50240a5f6ceaf690a77b0fccb17be51cfa151c2 (patch)
tree843603100f6987bf50a4e40713121c1e2a323b7f /Documentation/arm64
parent909e3ee4119f87b85c6e1b8534b2287ed1ea3ca2 (diff)
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arm64: mm: permit use of tagged pointers at EL0
TCR.TBI0 can be used to cause hardware address translation to ignore the top byte of userspace virtual addresses. Whilst not especially useful in standard C programs, this can be used by JITs to `tag' pointers with various pieces of metadata. This patch enables this bit for AArch64 Linux, and adds a new file to Documentation/arm64/ which describes some potential caveats when using tagged virtual addresses. Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com> Signed-off-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
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+ Tagged virtual addresses in AArch64 Linux
+ =========================================
+
+Author: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
+Date : 12 June 2013
+
+This document briefly describes the provision of tagged virtual
+addresses in the AArch64 translation system and their potential uses
+in AArch64 Linux.
+
+The kernel configures the translation tables so that translations made
+via TTBR0 (i.e. userspace mappings) have the top byte (bits 63:56) of
+the virtual address ignored by the translation hardware. This frees up
+this byte for application use, with the following caveats:
+
+ (1) The kernel requires that all user addresses passed to EL1
+ are tagged with tag 0x00. This means that any syscall
+ parameters containing user virtual addresses *must* have
+ their top byte cleared before trapping to the kernel.
+
+ (2) Tags are not guaranteed to be preserved when delivering
+ signals. This means that signal handlers in applications
+ making use of tags cannot rely on the tag information for
+ user virtual addresses being maintained for fields inside
+ siginfo_t. One exception to this rule is for signals raised
+ in response to debug exceptions, where the tag information
+ will be preserved.
+
+ (3) Special care should be taken when using tagged pointers,
+ since it is likely that C compilers will not hazard two
+ addresses differing only in the upper bits.
+
+The architecture prevents the use of a tagged PC, so the upper byte will
+be set to a sign-extension of bit 55 on exception return.
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