Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC 17/38] aie: add target helpers

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 24/08/2015 02:23, Emilio G. Cota wrote:
> +void HELPER(aie_st_pre)(CPUArchState *env, target_ulong vaddr)
> +{
> +    if (unlikely(env->aie_lock_enabled)) {
> +        if (env->aie_locked) {
> +            return;
> +        }

Now that I've reviewed your code more carefully, the approach you're
using looks more promising than I thought.  There are advantages over
Alvise's code, namely:

- cache-line vs. page granularity

- avoiding the global TLB flush (due to the virtually indexed TLBs)

- easy support for user-mode emulation

and some of the disadvantages look more easily fixable than I thought,
too (e.g. TLB entry bloat).

The main advantage of Alvise's code, on the other hand, is the minimal
overhead when there are no active LL/SC combinations and the better
integration with TCG.

A random idea: would it be possible to move some of the helper code to
generated TCG code?  For example, maintaining a count of outstanding
load-locked operations and forcing the slow path for stores if it is
non-zero?

Paolo

> +        aie_st_lock_ret(env, vaddr, GETRA());
> +    } else {
> +        hwaddr paddr = h_get_st_phys(env, vaddr, GETRA());
> +
> +        if (unlikely(aie_entry_exists(paddr))) {
> +            h_aie_lock(env, paddr);
> +        }
> +    }
> +}