ARM A53 and initial MMU mapping for EL0/1/2/3 ?

[Andre Przywara]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 22:05:00 +0000
Joakim Tjernlund <Joakim.Tjernlund at infinera.com> wrote:

Hi Joakim,

> Trying to figure out how I should map the MMU for normal RAM so it acessible
> from all ELx security states.

       ^^^^^^^

This does not make much sense. U-Boot is typically running in one
exception level only, and sets up the page table for exactly that EL.
Each EL uses a separate translation regime (with some twists for stage
2 EL2 and combined EL1/0, plus VHE). If you map your memory in EL3, then
drop to EL2, the EL3 page tables become irrelevant.

So in U-Boot we just set up the page tables for the EL we are running
in, and leave the paging for the lower exception levels to be set up at
the discretion of our payloads (kernels, hypervisors).

Please not that *secure* memory is a separate concept, and handled by
external hardware, typically using regions, not page tables.

> So far I have this mem_map: 
> 
> 		/* memory mapped RAM. 32MB  */
> 		.virt = 0x60000000UL,
> 		.phys = 0x60000000UL,
> 		.size = 0x02000000UL,
> 		.attrs = PTE_BLOCK_MEMTYPE(MT_NORMAL) | PTE_BLOCK_INNER_SHARE
> 
> but starting to doubt that is correct, can someone suggest what to put in the .attrs field?

Those are the correct attributes for normal ("cache-able") memory.
However you probably need at least another mapping for MMIO accesses,
which MUST NOT be cacheable (MT_DEVICE_NGNRNE), but device memory.
See the beginning of arch/arm/mach-sunxi/board.c for an example.

Cheers,
Andre