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    [ARM PATCH] 2430/3: TLS support for ARM · f5e58aa1
    Nicolas Pitre authored
    Patch from Nicolas Pitre
    
    This implements TLS support in the most efficient way for all ARM
    processors in use today.  The trick is to define a specific address in
    kernel area that is made readable from user space to hold the TLS
    pointer so it is highly efficient to retrieve it with no overhead.
    Since the kernel already maps a page at 0xffff0000 to hold the exception
    vectors, we can use the top of that page for storing the TLS ptr at
    0xffff0ffc. This address has the advantage of fitting optimally with the
    ARM load addressing mode as follows:
    	mov	rd, #0xffff0fff
    	ldr	rd, [rd, #-3]
    Considering load scheduling, this means 2 cycles to retrieve the TLS
    value which is even faster than a coprocessor access.  Even gcc
    generates the above assembly when given:
    	void *tls = *((void **)0xffff0ffc);
    This is fine to make the vector page readable from user space since it
    contains nothing that could compromize security and doesn't require an
    extra memory page to be allocated.
    On SMP (which should be ARMv6 and above only) the special reg for
    TLS will be available.  Since ARMv6 binaries are most likely to use
    strex/ldrex insns instead of swp to implement user space atomic
    primitives, those ARMv6 binaries won't execute on pre ARMv6 processors
    anyway.  So the abscence of a tls reg is a non issue for them already.
    Also on SMP targets, since the hivec page can't be relied upon to get
    the TLS value, we'll have the kernel emulate access to it through the
    data abort vector for backward compatibility with pre ARMv6 binaries.
    Otherwise, non SMP ARMv6 kernels will support both methods
    simultaneously.
    So the decision to use hivec or tlsreg could depend on whether given
    library is optimized for ARMv6+ or not. And since ARM SMP devices are
    still far from becoming mainstream we can safely go with the hivec (and
    hivec emulation on SMP) for the time being.
    
    Signed-off-by: Nicolas Pitre
    Signed-off-by: Russell King
    f5e58aa1
entry-common.S 5.62 KB