[Sound-open-firmware] cache invalidation evicting wrong lines

Guennadi Liakhovetski guennadi.liakhovetski at linux.intel.com
Fri Mar 15 13:29:37 CET 2019


On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 12:04:20PM +0000, Liam Girdwood wrote:
> On Fri, 2019-03-15 at 12:47 +0100, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
> > On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 10:30:30AM +0000, Liam Girdwood wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2019-03-15 at 10:20 +0100, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > Working on https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/pull/1053 I'm making sure
> > > > all the DSP cores see the same data, which on Xtensa seems to require
> > > > manual cache synchronisation. 
> > > 
> > > Fwiw, this depends on the ISA and xtensa IP configuration (and this can vary
> > > between xtensa devices since the ISA is extremely configurable). This may
> > > also
> > > be true for other DSP ISAs too. 
> > 
> > So not all configurations require manual cache sync? Do we know which ones do
> > and which ones don't?
> 
> Defined for each ISA, please see arch/cache.h. Client code does not need to know
> the cache config.
> 
> > 
> > > > This is a painful task, it's actually even
> > > > only practically possible because there aren't many objects in SOF that
> > > > can be accessed by different cores. However, with that PR interrupt
> > > > descriptors will also become accessible by multiple cores.
> > > > 
> > > > On Sue Creek there are two kinds of cascading interrupt controllers:
> > > > internal "level2" - "level5" and a DesignWare interrupt controller IP,
> > > > used by several peripherals, uncliding the UART. With the addition of
> > > > manual cache synchronisation UART interrupts stopped working. Debugging
> > > > showed, that DW INTC interrupt descriptors lose their updates when
> > > > other descriptors have their cache invalidated. And those descriptors
> > > > aren't even immediately close to each other in RAM. Roughly the
> > > > following is happening:
> > > 
> > > The DW- IRQ controller IP address space is non cacheable (since it's HW) so
> > > you
> > > shouldn't need to invalidate any access to it. 
> > 
> > Sorry, I didn't mean physical DW INTC registers, I meant a descriptor in
> > software, in RAM.
> > 
> > > > dw_intc->irq = new_irq;
> > > > list_for_item(list, descriptors) {
> > > > 	desc = container_of(list, struct irq_desc, list);
> > > > 	dcache_invalidate_region(desc, sizeof(*desc));
> > > > 
> > > > at which point dw_intc->irq loses its new_irq value and restores the
> > > > initial -EINVAL value. If I either remove the invalidation line above
> > > > or add a writeback for dw_intc between the first two lines, the problem
> > > > goes away.
> > > 
> > > So iiuc dw_intc->irq is being trashed when you invalidate desc ?
> > 
> > Yes,
> 
> Btw, have you tried both gcc and xt-xcc ? Also have you tried adding a memory
> barrier here (setting dw_intc volatile should do this) ?

No, only gcc. I thought about trying volatile, but I couldn't convince myself,
that that should be the correct solution.

> > > > Therefore questions:
> > > > 
> > > > 1. am I using cache invalidation wrongly?
> > > > 2. if the invalidated memory region isn't cache-line aligned, what happens
> > > >    then? Are all full lines invalidated, thus potentially erasing data?
> > > >    But even if this were handled wrongly, it wouldn't cause this problem,
> > > >    because those descriptors aren't adjacent in RAM.
> > > > 3. is that a software or a hardware bug?
> > > > 4. how to fix?
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > More questions
> > > 
> > > 1) Are other dw_intc-> members trashed ? How is this structure/member
> > > aligned in
> > > memory ?
> > 
> > Not in my test, because other members were initialised statically and only
> > .irq
> > was assigned before scanning the descriptor list and invalidating caches. I
> > don't
> > impose any alignment so far. The DW INTC descriptor was at 0xbe046aa8 and the
> > descriptor, whose invalidation caused the trouble was at 0xbe04640c. .irq is
> > in
> > fact the first element in the struct.
> > 
> 
> ok, so both not aligned on 64 bytes and not on the same cache line
> 
> 
> > > 2) Has descriptors been invalidated ? i.e. are you invalidating a valid
> > > address
> > > for desc ?
> > 
> > Yes, addresses are valid.
> > 
> > > 3) If desc and sizeof(*desc) are not cache line/size alligned, then try and
> > > make
> > > sure that size is rounded up to nearest cache line and desc rounded down to
> > > nearest cache line for alignment.
> > 
> > If this is the problem, this would indicate a hardware bug? I thought about
> > trying
> > this but according to our understanding this shouuldn't be necessary?
> 
> No HW bug, but HW can only invalidate/writeback in blocks of cacheline size with
> cacheline alignment. Currently the code is not checking this and this may be
> "undefined" at ISA level. Can you check xthal_dcache_region_writeback().

Right, what I suspected. So, invalidating non-cache-aligned data leads to memory
around the desired area to also lose the cache contents, possibly leading to
data loss.

> > > 4) Is this code running on core 0 (the same core that registered all the
> > > IRQs) ?
> > 
> > So far Sue Creek doesn't enable SMP, so, yes.
> 
> Ok, so to confirm there is also no other IP (like DMA) that can write to L2/SRAM
> except core 0 ? and can you provide the whole function where this fails.

There is DMA, but later. This happens during initialisation, before DMA. And DMA
doesn't touch those areas anyway. The beginning of the function, where this happens
is below.

Thanks
Guennadi

int interrupt_cascade_register(struct irq_cascade_desc *cascade)
{
	struct irq_desc *desc = &cascade->desc;
	struct irq_cascade_desc *p_cascade;
	struct list_item *list;
	unsigned long flags, i;
	int ret;

	if (!cascade->name || !cascade->ops)
		return -EINVAL;

	spinlock_init(&cascade->lock);
	for (i = 0; i < PLATFORM_IRQ_CHILDREN; i++)
		list_init(&cascade->child[i].list);

	spin_lock_irq(&cascade_lock, flags);

	list_for_item_smp (list, &cascade_list) {
		struct irq_cascade_desc *c = container_of(list,
						struct irq_cascade_desc, list);

// One of these kills "cascade"
		dcache_invalidate_region(c, sizeof(*c));
		if (!rstrcmp(c->name, cascade->name)) {
			ret = -EEXIST;
			goto unlock;
		}
	}



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