MIPS r4k "TLB modified exception" generated for TLB entries that are not visible to the TLBP instruction I occasionally see that the TLBP instruction fails to find the corresponding TLB entry in the TLB Modified exception handler. This behavior is unexpected, because the invocation of the TLB Modified exception suggests there indeed is such an entry in the TLB and only requires its dirty bit to be set. The operating system which can trigger and is susceptible to this behavior is a HelenOS branch located in lp:~jakub/helenos/mips-malta. The QEMU version on which this is reproducible is QEMU 1.4.0 and also some others. When I looked into the QEMU sources, I noticed the following discrepancy, which could potentially explain the behavior: 65 /* MIPS32/MIPS64 R4000-style MMU emulation */ 66 int r4k_map_address (CPUMIPSState *env, hwaddr *physical, int *prot, 67 target_ulong address, int rw, int access_type) 68 { 72 for (i = 0; i < env->tlb->tlb_in_use; i++) { 1865 void r4k_helper_tlbp(CPUMIPSState *env) 1866 { 1875 for (i = 0; i < env->tlb->nb_tlb; i++) { From the above it appears as if the the code which searches the TLB for a matching entry searched also the QEMU-specific "shadow" TLB entries, which is, however, not in line with how the TLBP instruction searches the TLB. So if a matching entry is found on index >= tlb_in_use, the HelenOS exception handler using TLBP to locate the entry would hit an assertion on seeing the Index register bit P set. I also suspect there is a similar issue with the TLB Invalid exception, but thanks to the specifics of the MIPS 4Kc CPU, HelenOS is not susceptible in this case. Linux under QEMU does not hit this issue because it turns out that its "TLB modified" handler does not check the P bit of the Index register after the TLBP instruction. hello, in the past year gsoc qemu proposed projects there where on eproject that i liked, which were: qemu IA64 emulation : http://wiki.qemu.org/Google_Summer_of_Code_2012#IA64_emulation this year i have not seen this project to be proposed, so i would like to know if the qemu will be selected i would like to know if i will be able to begin to make this project. i am also a very novice in the asm programming (so very noobish in the field, so u will have to answer a lot of noobish questions :) ), so would u accept such a student to make this project? i thank you in advance for the answer best regards On 04/04/2013 07:34 PM, Gigi D'Agostino wrote: > in the past year gsoc qemu proposed projects there where on eproject that i > liked, which were: qemu IA64 emulation : > http://wiki.qemu.org/Google_Summer_of_Code_2012#IA64_emulation > > this year i have not seen this project to be proposed, so i would like to > know if the qemu will be selected i would like to know if i will be able to > begin to make this project. > i am also a very novice in the asm programming (so very noobish in the > field, so u will have to answer a lot of noobish questions :) ), so would u > accept such a student to make this project? I can't speak for QEMU as I am from the HelenOS mentoring organization, but according to how GSoC works, a student is free to suggest any project. The organizations will then pick the best student applications for things they like and can provide mentors for. HTH, Jakub Hi Lurie, On 04.04.2013, at 19:34, Iurie wrote: > hello, > in the past year gsoc qemu proposed projects there where on eproject that i liked, which were: qemu IA64 emulation : http://wiki.qemu.org/Google_Summer_of_Code_2012#IA64_emulation > > this year i have not seen this project to be proposed, so i would like to know if the qemu will be selected i would like to know if i will be able to begin to make this project. > i am also a very novice in the asm programming (so very noobish in the field, so u will have to answer a lot of noobish questions :) ), so would u accept such a student to make this project? We had a student working on IA64 emulation last year. Typically, to get a new target working, you start off implementing Linux user space emulation, then continue to system emulation. User space emulation is a lot easier to debug, you need less features of the CPU (no MMU emulation, no privileged instructions) and you don't need device emulation code. However, IA64 maps its virtual memory to locations that x86_64 can not map at all. Since in QEMU, Linux user emulation leverages the host's MMU to do virtual memory maps, IA64 programs can't be mapped on x86_64 hosts, which are the typical development environment for QEMU target code. So at the end of the day, we had to cancel the IA64 emulation project last year. There is still the slight chance to do IA64 emulation if you take the KVM IA64 code from ~3-4 years ago, forward port that to current QEMU, get the device model running with KVM on a real IA64 machine, and then implement system emulation straight on. However, that is not an easy task. It requires quite in-depth knowledge of all the changes that happened in QEMU device models within the last years and a lot of debugging skills to get KVM working. So unless you have a lot of IA64 background, I'm afraid this is vastly out of scope for summer of code. Unfortunately. Alex hi, thank you very much for the answer. i will try do some more easy projects durring this summer related to asm and things like that and i hope in the following year to do this project. best regards On 6 April 2013 10:31, Alexander Graf