xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/fpu_kern.9 (revision a6662c37b6ffee46e18be5f7570149edc64c1d0b)
1.\" Copyright (c) 2014
2.\"	Konstantin Belousov <kib@FreeBSD.org>.  All rights reserved.
3.\"
4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
6.\" are met:
7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
8.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
9.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
10.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
11.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
12.\"
13.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
14.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
15.\" OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.
16.\" IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
17.\" INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT
18.\" NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
19.\" DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
20.\" THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
21.\" (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF
22.\" THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
23.\"
24.Dd October 13, 2020
25.Dt FPU_KERN 9
26.Os
27.Sh NAME
28.Nm fpu_kern
29.Nd "facility to use the FPU in the kernel"
30.Sh SYNOPSIS
31.In machine/fpu.h
32.Ft struct fpu_kern_ctx *
33.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx "u_int flags"
34.Ft void
35.Fn fpu_kern_free_ctx "struct fpu_kern_ctx *ctx"
36.Ft void
37.Fn fpu_kern_enter "struct thread *td" "struct fpu_kern_ctx *ctx" "u_int flags"
38.Ft int
39.Fn fpu_kern_leave "struct thread *td" "struct fpu_kern_ctx *ctx"
40.Ft int
41.Fn fpu_kern_thread "u_int flags"
42.Ft int
43.Fn is_fpu_kern_thread "u_int flags"
44.Sh DESCRIPTION
45The
46.Nm
47family of functions allows the use of FPU hardware in kernel code.
48Modern FPUs are not limited to providing hardware implementation for
49floating point arithmetic; they offer advanced accelerators for cryptography
50and other computational-intensive algorithms.
51These facilities share registers with the FPU hardware.
52.Pp
53Typical kernel code does not need access to the FPU.
54Saving a large register file on each entry to the kernel would waste
55time.
56When kernel code uses the FPU, the current FPU state must be saved to
57avoid corrupting the user-mode state, and vice versa.
58.Pp
59The management of the save and restore is automatic.
60The processor catches accesses to the FPU registers
61when the non-current context tries to access them.
62Explicit calls are required for the allocation of the save area and
63the notification of the start and end of the code using the FPU.
64.Pp
65The
66.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx
67function allocates the memory used by
68.Nm
69to track the use of the FPU hardware state and the related software state.
70The
71.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx
72function requires the
73.Fa flags
74argument, which currently accepts the following flags:
75.Bl -tag -width ".Dv FPU_KERN_NOWAIT" -offset indent
76.It Dv FPU_KERN_NOWAIT
77Do not wait for the available memory if the request could not be satisfied
78without sleep.
79.It 0
80No special handling is required.
81.El
82.Pp
83The function returns the allocated context area, or
84.Va NULL
85if the allocation failed.
86.Pp
87The
88.Fn fpu_kern_free_ctx
89function frees the context previously allocated by
90.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx .
91.Pp
92The
93.Fn fpu_kern_enter
94function designates the start of the region of kernel code where the
95use of the FPU is allowed.
96Its arguments are:
97.Bl -tag -width ".Fa ctx" -offset indent
98.It Fa td
99Currently must be
100.Va curthread .
101.It Fa ctx
102The context save area previously allocated by
103.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx
104and not currently in use by another call to
105.Fn fpu_kern_enter .
106.It Fa flags
107This argument currently accepts the following flags:
108.Bl -tag -width ".Dv FPU_KERN_NORMAL" -offset indent
109.It Dv FPU_KERN_NORMAL
110Indicates that the caller intends to access the full FPU state.
111Must be specified currently.
112.It Dv FPU_KERN_KTHR
113Indicates that no saving of the current FPU state should be performed,
114if the thread called
115.Xr fpu_kern_thread 9
116function.
117This is intended to minimize code duplication in callers which
118could be used from both kernel thread and syscall contexts.
119The
120.Fn fpu_kern_leave
121function correctly handles such contexts.
122.It Dv FPU_KERN_NOCTX
123Avoid nesting save area.
124If the flag is specified, the
125.Fa ctx
126must be passed as
127.Va NULL .
128The flag should only be used for really short code blocks
129which can be executed in a critical section.
130It avoids the need to allocate the FPU context by the cost
131of increased system latency.
132.El
133.El
134.Pp
135The function does not sleep or block.
136It could cause an FPU trap during execution, and on the first FPU access
137after the function returns, as well as after each context switch.
138On i386 and amd64 this will be the
139.Nm Device Not Available
140exception (see Intel Software Developer Manual for the reference).
141.Pp
142The
143.Fn fpu_kern_leave
144function ends the region started by
145.Fn fpu_kern_enter .
146It is erroneous to use the FPU in the kernel before
147.Fn fpu_kern_enter
148or after
149.Fn fpu_kern_leave .
150The function takes the
151.Fa td
152thread argument, which currently must be
153.Va curthread ,
154and the
155.Fa ctx
156context pointer, previously passed to
157.Fn fpu_kern_enter .
158After the function returns, the context may be freed or reused
159by another invocation of
160.Fn fpu_kern_enter .
161The function always returns 0.
162.Pp
163The
164.Fn fpu_kern_thread
165function enables an optimization for threads which never leave to
166the usermode.
167The current thread will reuse the usermode save area for the kernel FPU state
168instead of requiring an explicitly allocated context.
169There are no flags defined for the function, and no error states
170that the function returns.
171Once this function has been called, neither
172.Fn fpu_kern_enter
173nor
174.Fn fpu_kern_leave
175is required to be called and the fpu is available for use in the calling thread.
176.Pp
177The
178.Fn is_fpu_kern_thread
179function returns the boolean indicating whether the current thread
180entered the mode enabled by
181.Fn fpu_kern_thread .
182There is currently no flags defined for the function, the return
183value is true if the current thread have the permanent FPU save area,
184and false otherwise.
185.Sh NOTES
186The
187.Nm
188is currently implemented only for the i386, amd64, arm64, and powerpc
189architectures.
190.Pp
191There is no way to handle floating point exceptions raised from
192kernel mode.
193.Pp
194The unused
195.Fa flags
196arguments
197to the
198.Nm
199functions are to be extended to allow specification of the
200set of the FPU hardware state used by the code region.
201This would allow optimizations of saving and restoring the state.
202.Sh AUTHORS
203The
204.Nm
205facitily and this manual page were written by
206.An Konstantin Belousov Aq Mt kib@FreeBSD.org .
207The arm64 support was added by
208.An Andrew Turner Aq Mt andrew@FreeBSD.org .
209The powerpc support was added by
210.An Shawn Anastasio Aq Mt sanastasio@raptorengineering.com .
211.Sh BUGS
212.Fn fpu_kern_leave
213should probably have type
214.Ft void
215(like
216.Fn fpu_kern_enter ) .
217