Re: rseq/arm32: choosing rseq code signature

From: Peter Maydell
Date: Mon Apr 15 2019 - 09:30:24 EST


On Mon, 15 Apr 2019 at 14:11, Mathieu Desnoyers
<mathieu.desnoyers@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> ----- On Apr 11, 2019, at 3:55 PM, peter maydell peter.maydell@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 11 Apr 2019 at 18:51, Mathieu Desnoyers
> > <mathieu.desnoyers@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> * This translates to the following instruction pattern in the T16 instruction
> >> * set:
> >> *
> >> * little endian:
> >> * def3 udf #243 ; 0xf3
> >> * e7f5 b.n <7f5>
> >> *
> >> * big endian:
> >> * e7f5 b.n <7f5>
> >> * def3 udf #243 ; 0xf3
> >
> > Do we really care about big-endian instruction-ordering for Thumb?
> > It requires (AIUI) either an ARMv7R CPU which implements and sets
> > SCTLR.IE to 1, or a v6-or-earlier CPU using BE32, and it's going to
> > be even rarer than normal BE8 big-endian...
>
> I don't think we care enough about it to look for a trick to
> turn the branch into something else (which would not branch away from the
> udf instruction), but considering this signature will be ABI, it's good to
> be thorough documentation-wise and cover all existing cases.

I think if you want to document it it would be helpful to
readers to make it clear that this is the ultra-rare
big-endian-instruction-order "big endian Thumb", not the only
moderately-rare little-endian-instructions-big-endian-data
"big endian Thumb".

thanks
-- PMM