| Leif Lindholm | 64d2dc3 | 2010-09-16 18:00:47 +0100 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | Software emulation of deprecated SWP instruction (CONFIG_SWP_EMULATE) |
| 2 | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ARMv6 architecture deprecates use of the SWP/SWPB instructions, and recommeds |
| 5 | moving to the load-locked/store-conditional instructions LDREX and STREX. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | ARMv7 multiprocessing extensions introduce the ability to disable these |
| 8 | instructions, triggering an undefined instruction exception when executed. |
| 9 | Trapped instructions are emulated using an LDREX/STREX or LDREXB/STREXB |
| 10 | sequence. If a memory access fault (an abort) occurs, a segmentation fault is |
| 11 | signalled to the triggering process. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | /proc/cpu/swp_emulation holds some statistics/information, including the PID of |
| 14 | the last process to trigger the emulation to be invocated. For example: |
| 15 | --- |
| 16 | Emulated SWP: 12 |
| 17 | Emulated SWPB: 0 |
| 18 | Aborted SWP{B}: 1 |
| 19 | Last process: 314 |
| 20 | --- |
| 21 | |
| 22 | NOTE: when accessing uncached shared regions, LDREX/STREX rely on an external |
| 23 | transaction monitoring block called a global monitor to maintain update |
| 24 | atomicity. If your system does not implement a global monitor, this option can |
| 25 | cause programs that perform SWP operations to uncached memory to deadlock, as |
| 26 | the STREX operation will always fail. |
| 27 | |