Disable the use of SEV instructions

I have Linaro Linux running on my Zedboard platform. There is a piece of hardware running on the FPGA that is getting confused with the lots of SEV instructions being executed by the other components on the board (e.g., Linux kernel and probably other components).

I understand that Linux uses SEV/WFE to implement lock routines. However, I wonder if there is a way to configure the kernel to use other synchronization mechanism and thus disable the execution of these SEV instructions?

0 zedhed over 8 years ago

Hi divcesar,

According to this post here, SEV instruction is not implemented by the compiler:

https://community.arm.com/processors/f/discussions/5710/sev-instruction-from-c-compiler/13435?pi1735=45

If that is really the case, then you should be able to locate where the kernel explicitly calls SEV through inline assembly (usually in the arch sections of kernel source code) and modify it's use there.

This indicates that SEV is needed for synchronization between the cores so it may not be a good approach to avoid SEV:

http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dui0489f/CIHEGBBF.html

Regards,

-Kevin
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