On 12/3/12, Olof Kindgren <[email protected]> wrote:
> 2012/12/3 Julius Baxter <[email protected]>:
>> On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 8:00 AM, Olof Kindgren <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>> 2012/12/3 Peter Gavin <[email protected]>:
>>>> On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Julius Baxter <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> So, please, go to that wiki page, submit a proposal, we can discuss
>>>>> it, but it's not going into this round of the architecture spec. There
>>>>> will be another opportunity, certainly.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I've come to agree with Matthew that they should raise exceptions, but
>>>> I'm
>>>> content with your earlier suggestion that they be marked as having an
>>>> implementation dependent effect so we can get the spec out.  I looked
>>>> through the spec, and I believe that l.m[ft]spr with privileged
>>>> addresses
>>>> and l.rfe are the only instructions that could be problematic for
>>>> virtualization in user mode.
>>>>
>>>> -Pete
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> OpenRISC mailing list
>>>> [email protected]
>>>> http://lists.openrisc.net/listinfo/openrisc
>>>>
>>>
>>> My vote goes for proper separation of user mode and supervisor mode.
>>> As we want to future-proof these things, I think it's a bad idea to
>>> take shortcuts regarding the privileged instructions.
>>
>> Hej Olof,
>>
>> This isn't a shortcut, it's just something to say what the behaviour
>> is, it's not locked in forever. But I understand there's the potential
>> for it to be annoying if it's defined in one way in the earlier spec
>> and a different, incompatible way in a later version. So, I'm going to
>> leave it in an unfinished state, like other things (instruction
>> classes are another big issue we haven't gotten to the bottom of, and
>> that is a far more important and practical issue than this hypervisor
>> stuff.)
>>
>>>
>>> On the other hand I can also see the need to push out a 1.0 spec. One
>>> of the things that we really need in the spec is the updated revision
>>> registers. That feature will allow us to break backwards compatibility
>>> easier in the future as we can ask the hardware what version of the
>>> arch spec we are implementing.
>>>
>>> With this said, would it be possible to put out a new version of the
>>> arch spec with just the versioning stuff (plus all the things that we
>>> have finished discussing) and put the rest of the things on hold for a
>>> while? I fear that the number of proposed changes are growing too much
>>> for a single update
>>
>> That's basically what we're doing. I'm adding the things which we have
>> known about and discussed for months. The most recent development
>> which is going in is the overflow exception behaviour, but this has
>> been discussed for months and I'm convinced we've got a solution.
>>
>> Beyond that, as I mentioned, we've still got a lot of big issues to
>> solve in the spec, like the instruction classes, instructions for
>> atomic memory access, performance counters, sleep/halt instructions.
>> etc. So there's definitely things we've not solved yet, but we should
>> run with what we have, which you appear to agree to.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Julius
>
> Hi Julius,
>
> Then you have my blessing, and also a big thanks for taking on this job.
> I know it's a lot of work, but you're doing a great job of keeping it
> together.

Well, wait for the version I propose we adopt for 1.0 before blessing
anything :)

Yes, it's a bit of work, but it had to be done, and sorry it's taking
a bit longer to get out than I would have hoped - have had limited
spare time over the last week, but it will be out before the end of
this week.

Cheers

Julius
_______________________________________________
OpenRISC mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.openrisc.net/listinfo/openrisc

Reply via email to