xref: /freebsd/share/man/man9/fpu_kern.9 (revision 7cc42f6d25ef2e19059d088fa7d4853fe9afefb5)
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2.\"	Konstantin Belousov <kib@FreeBSD.org>.  All rights reserved.
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24.\" $FreeBSD$
25.\"
26.Dd March 7, 2018
27.Dt FPU_KERN 9
28.Os
29.Sh NAME
30.Nm fpu_kern
31.Nd "facility to use the FPU in the kernel"
32.Sh SYNOPSIS
33.Ft struct fpu_kern_ctx *
34.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx "u_int flags"
35.Ft void
36.Fn fpu_kern_free_ctx "struct fpu_kern_ctx *ctx"
37.Ft void
38.Fn fpu_kern_enter "struct thread *td" "struct fpu_kern_ctx *ctx" "u_int flags"
39.Ft int
40.Fn fpu_kern_leave "struct thread *td" "struct fpu_kern_ctx *ctx"
41.Ft int
42.Fn fpu_kern_thread "u_int flags"
43.Ft int
44.Fn is_fpu_kern_thread "u_int flags"
45.Sh DESCRIPTION
46The
47.Nm
48family of functions allows the use of FPU hardware in kernel code.
49Modern FPUs are not limited to providing hardware implementation for
50floating point arithmetic; they offer advanced accelerators for cryptography
51and other computational-intensive algorithms.
52These facilities share registers with the FPU hardware.
53.Pp
54Typical kernel code does not need access to the FPU.
55Saving a large register file on each entry to the kernel would waste
56time.
57When kernel code uses the FPU, the current FPU state must be saved to
58avoid corrupting the user-mode state, and vice versa.
59.Pp
60The management of the save and restore is automatic.
61The processor catches accesses to the FPU registers
62when the non-current context tries to access them.
63Explicit calls are required for the allocation of the save area and
64the notification of the start and end of the code using the FPU.
65.Pp
66The
67.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx
68function allocates the memory used by
69.Nm
70to track the use of the FPU hardware state and the related software state.
71The
72.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx
73function requires the
74.Fa flags
75argument, which currently accepts the following flags:
76.Bl -tag -width ".Dv FPU_KERN_NOWAIT" -offset indent
77.It Dv FPU_KERN_NOWAIT
78Do not wait for the available memory if the request could not be satisfied
79without sleep.
80.It 0
81No special handling is required.
82.El
83.Pp
84The function returns the allocated context area, or
85.Va NULL
86if the allocation failed.
87.Pp
88The
89.Fn fpu_kern_free_ctx
90function frees the context previously allocated by
91.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx .
92.Pp
93The
94.Fn fpu_kern_enter
95function designates the start of the region of kernel code where the
96use of the FPU is allowed.
97Its arguments are:
98.Bl -tag -width ".Fa ctx" -offset indent
99.It Fa td
100Currently must be
101.Va curthread .
102.It Fa ctx
103The context save area previously allocated by
104.Fn fpu_kern_alloc_ctx
105and not currently in use by another call to
106.Fn fpu_kern_enter .
107.It Fa flags
108This argument currently accepts the following flags:
109.Bl -tag -width ".Dv FPU_KERN_NORMAL" -offset indent
110.It Dv FPU_KERN_NORMAL
111Indicates that the caller intends to access the full FPU state.
112Must be specified currently.
113.It Dv FPU_KERN_KTHR
114Indicates that no saving of the current FPU state should be performed,
115if the thread called
116.Xr fpu_kern_thread 9
117function.
118This is intended to minimize code duplication in callers which
119could be used from both kernel thread and syscall contexts.
120The
121.Fn fpu_kern_leave
122function correctly handles such contexts.
123.It Dv FPU_KERN_NOCTX
124Avoid nesting save area.
125If the flag is specified, the
126.Fa ctx
127must be passed as
128.Va NULL .
129The flag should only be used for really short code blocks
130which can be executed in a critical section.
131It avoids the need to allocate the FPU context by the cost
132of increased system latency.
133.El
134.El
135.Pp
136The function does not sleep or block.
137It could cause an FPU trap during execution, and on the first FPU access
138after the function returns, as well as after each context switch.
139On i386 and amd64 this will be the
140.Nm Device Not Available
141exception (see Intel Software Developer Manual for the reference).
142.Pp
143The
144.Fn fpu_kern_leave
145function ends the region started by
146.Fn fpu_kern_enter .
147It is erroneous to use the FPU in the kernel before
148.Fn fpu_kern_enter
149or after
150.Fn fpu_kern_leave .
151The function takes the
152.Fa td
153thread argument, which currently must be
154.Va curthread ,
155and the
156.Fa ctx
157context pointer, previously passed to
158.Fn fpu_kern_enter .
159After the function returns, the context may be freed or reused
160by another invocation of
161.Fn fpu_kern_enter .
162The function always returns 0.
163.Pp
164The
165.Fn fpu_kern_thread
166function enables an optimization for threads which never leave to
167the usermode.
168The current thread will reuse the usermode save area for the kernel FPU state
169instead of requiring an explicitly allocated context.
170There are no flags defined for the function, and no error states
171that the function returns.
172Once this function has been called, neither
173.Fn fpu_kern_enter
174nor
175.Fn fpu_kern_leave
176is required to be called and the fpu is available for use in the calling thread.
177.Pp
178The
179.Fn is_fpu_kern_thread
180function returns the boolean indicating whether the current thread
181entered the mode enabled by
182.Fn fpu_kern_thread .
183There is currently no flags defined for the function, the return
184value is true if the current thread have the permanent FPU save area,
185and false otherwise.
186.Sh NOTES
187The
188.Nm
189is currently implemented only for the i386, amd64, and arm64 architectures.
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 .
209.Sh BUGS
210.Fn fpu_kern_leave
211should probably have type
212.Ft void
213(like
214.Fn fpu_kern_enter ) .
215