• Jeffrey Lee's avatar
    Implement support for cacheable pagetables · 65fa6a28
    Jeffrey Lee authored
    Detail:
      Modern ARMs (ARMv6+) introduce the possibility for the page table walk hardware to make use of the data cache(s) when performing memory accesses. This can significantly reduce the cost of a TLB miss on the system, and since the accesses are cache-coherent with the CPU it allows us to make the page tables cacheable for CPU (program) accesses also, improving the performance of page table manipulation by the OS.
      Even on ARMs where the page table walk can't use the data cache, it's been measured that page table manipulation operations can still benefit from placing the page tables in write-through or bufferable memory.
      So with that in mind, this set of changes updates the OS to allow cacheable/bufferable page tables to be used by the OS + MMU, using a system-appropriate cache policy.
      File changes:
      - hdr/KernelWS - Allocate workspace for storing the page flags that are to be used by the page tables
      - hdr/OSMem - Re-specify CP_CB_AlternativeDCache as having a different behaviour on ARMv6+ (inner write-through, outer write-back)
      - hdr/Options - Add CacheablePageTables option to allow switching back to non-cacheable page tables if necessary. Add SyncPageTables var which will be set {TRUE} if either the OS or the architecture requires a DSB after writing to a faulting page table entry.
      - s/ARM600, s/VMSAv6 - Add new SetTTBR & GetPageFlagsForCacheablePageTables functions. Update VMSAv6 for wider XCBTable (now 2 bytes per element)
      - s/ARMops - Update pre-ARMv7 MMU_Changing ARMops to drain the write buffer on entry if cacheable pagetables are in use (ARMv7+ already has this behaviour due to architectural requirements). For VMSAv6 Normal memory, change the way that the OS encodes the cache policy in the page table entries so that it's more compatible with the encoding used in the TTBR.
      - s/ChangeDyn - Update page table page flag handling to use PageTable_PageFlags. Make use of new PageTableSync macro.
      - s/Exceptions, s/AMBControl/memmap - Make use of new PageTableSync macro.
      - s/HAL - Update MMU initialisation sequence to make use of PageTable_PageFlags + SetTTBR
      - s/Kernel - Add PageTableSync macro, to be used after any write to a faulting page table entry
      - s/MemInfo - Update OS_Memory 0 page flag conversion. Update OS_Memory 24 to use new symbol for page table access permissions.
      - s/MemMap2 - Use PageTableSync. Add routines to enable/disable cacheable pagetables
      - s/NewReset - Enable cacheable pagetables once we're fully clear of the MMU initialision sequence (doing earlier would be trickier due to potential double-mapping)
    Admin:
      Tested on pretty much everything currently supported
      Delivers moderate performance benefits to page table ops on old systems (e.g. 10% faster), astronomical benefits on some new systems (up to 8x faster)
      Stats: https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/3/topics/2728?page=2#posts-58015
    
    
    Version 5.71. Tagged as 'Kernel-5_71'
    65fa6a28
ARM600 21.6 KB