Re: [PATCH v3 2/4] cacheinfo: Check cache properties are present in DT

[Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>]

On 4/14/23 02:05, Sudeep Holla wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 01:06:46PM -0700, Florian Fainelli wrote:
>> On 4/13/23 12:50, Sudeep Holla wrote:
>>> On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 11:16:37AM -0700, Florian Fainelli wrote:
>>>> On 4/13/23 02:14, Pierre Gondois wrote:
>>>>> If a Device Tree (DT) is used, the presence of cache properties is
>>>>> assumed. Not finding any is not considered. For arm64 platforms,
>>>>> cache information can be fetched from the clidr_el1 register.
>>>>> Checking whether cache information is available in the DT
>>>>> allows to switch to using clidr_el1.
>>>>>
>>>>> init_of_cache_level()
>>>>> \-of_count_cache_leaves()
>>>>> will assume there a 2 cache leaves (L1 data/instruction caches), which
>>>>> can be different from clidr_el1 information.
>>>>>
>>>>> cache_setup_of_node() tries to read cache properties in the DT.
>>>>> If there are none, this is considered a success. Knowing no
>>>>> information was available would allow to switch to using clidr_el1.
>>>>>
>>>>> Fixes: de0df442ee49 ("cacheinfo: Check 'cache-unified' property to count cache leaves")
>>>>> Reported-by: Alexandre Ghiti <alexghiti@rivosinc.com>
>>>>> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230404-hatred-swimmer-6fecdf33b57a@spud/
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Pierre Gondois <pierre.gondois@arm.com>
>>>>
>>>> Humm, it would appear that the cache levels and topology is still provided,
>>>> despite the lack of cache properties in the Device Tree which is intended by
>>>> this patch set however we lost the size/ways/sets information, could we not
>>>> complement the missing properties here?
>>>>
>>>
>>> I am confused. How and from where the information was fetched before this
>>> change ?
>>
>> I applied Pierre's patches to my tree and then did the following:
>>
>> - before means booting with the patches applied and the Device Tree
>> providing cache information: {d,i}-cache-{size,line-size,sets} and
>> next-level-cache
>>
>> - after means removing all of those properties still with the patches
>> applied
>>
> 
> Ah okay, I assumed something totally different and hence thought patches
> broke something.
> 
>> My expectation is that if we omit the properties in the Device Tree, we will
>> fallback to reading that information out of clidr_el1. However as can be
>> seen from the "before" and "after" outputs, there is loss of information, as
>> we no longer have the cacheline size, number of sets/ways, the rest is valid
>> though.
>>
> 
> Correct and that is expected. We dropped ccsidr_el1 support to fetch cache
> geometry with the commit a8d4636f96ad ("arm64: cacheinfo: Remove CCSIDR-based
> cache information probing") after Arm ARM added wordings not to infer the
> information. However clidr_el1 info still holds except it may not include
> transparent system level caches. Hope that clarifies.

Yes it definitively does, thanks a lot for the refresher.
-- 
Florian