Hi All,
The next release of the Firmware-A bundle of projects tagged v2.10 has an expected code freeze date of Nov, 7th 2023.
Refer to the Release Cadence section from TF-A documentation (https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/trusted-firmware-a.git/tree/docs/about…).
Closing out the release takes around 6-10 working days after the code freeze.
Preparations tasks for v2.10 release should start in coming month.
We want to ensure that planned feature patches for the release are submitted in good time for the review process to conclude. As a kind recommendation and a matter of sharing CI resources, please launch CI jobs with care e.g.:
-For simple platform, docs changes, or one liners, use Allow-CI+1 label (no need for a full Allow-CI+2 run).
-For large patch stacks use Allow-CI+2 at top of the patch stack (and if required few individual Allow+CI+1 in the middle of the patch stack).
-Carefully analyze results and fix the change if required, before launching new jobs on the same change.
-If after issuing a Allow-CI+1 or Allow-CI+2 label a Build start notice is not added as a gerrit comment on the patch right away please be patient as under heavy load CI jobs can be queued and in extreme conditions it can be over an hour before the Build start notice is issued. Issuing another Allow-CI+1 or Allow-CI+2 label will just result in an additional job being queued.
Thanks & Regards,
Olivier.
Hi,
I would like to restart a discussion that we already had a few years
ago on a thread called "SMC to intentionally trigger a panic in TF-A"
(https://lists.trustedfirmware.org/archives/search?mlist=tf-a%40lists.truste…)
but that petered out without any real resolution (and resulted in me
ultimately not implementing the feature I was hoping to add).
Basically, we are repeatedly stumbling over the problem that we have a
use case for some platform-independent SMC API that we want to
implement in TF-A, but don't have an appropriate SMC FID range to put
it. My request from a few years ago was about implementing a call to
intentionally trigger a panic in TF-A for test-automation purposes.
Today we came up with a use case where a Trusted OS wants to query
BL31 about the location of a shared log buffer:
https://review.trustedfirmware.org/20478 .
Currently, the available SMC ranges are Arm, CPU, SiP, OEM, Standard,
Hypervisor, TA and TOS. The SiP, OEM and TOS ranges are all specific
to a single silicon vendor, OEM or trusted OS implementation, so they
are not good targets to implement APIs that would make sense to be
shared among multiple of these. In theory, the Standard range would
probably be the right target to implement calls that are independently
useful for multiple platforms / OSes... but as far as I understand,
adding a new call to that range requires petitioning Arm to update the
SMC calling convention itself, which is a ridiculously high bar to
implement a small utility API. In practice, the only choice we have
for implementing these kinds of calls is to let every OEM, SiP or TOS
assign its own (different) FID for it and then write separate SMC
handlers for each in TF-A that all end up calling the same underlying
function... which creates a lot of unnecessary code duplication and
identifier soup (especially in the case of SMCs for the non-secure OS
which would then be implemented by a platform-independent Linux driver
that needs a big mapping table to decide which FID to use on which
platform for the same API).
I think it would be very useful if there was another range of easily
allocatable FIDs that developers could just add to with a simple TF-A
CL without having to go through a huge specification update process.
There are still 41 OENs unused in the Arm SMCCC, and I don't think any
new ones were added in the 10 years that the specification existed...
so we are really not going to run out of them any time soon. If we
could get even one of those OENs for this purpose, we would have 64K
FIDs to use up for our small, simple platform-independent API needs,
which should last us a long while. We could maybe call it the "Secure
Monitor range" and say the FIDs are specific to a certain
implementation of Secure Monitor (e.g. TF-A). Then there could just be
a header file in the TF-A sources that serves as the authoritative FID
assignment table for TF-A, and anyone with a sufficiently useful idea
(subject to TF-A maintainer review) for a platform-independent API
like this could add it there by just uploading a patch.
I recently argued for a similar "simple tag allocation" concept on
https://github.com/FirmwareHandoff/firmware_handoff and it found
support there, so I hope I'll be able to convince you that it would be
useful for SMC FIDs as well?
Hi,
I was looking at imx_hab_handler, which forwards calls into the BootROM on i.MX SoCs
in response to secure monitor calls. The BootROM call (and thus the SiP call) accepts
two pointers as arguments, where it writes data.
The plat/imx/imx8m/imx8m*/imx8m*_bl31_setup.c files map the RAM as MT_MEMORY | MT_RW,
which would mean that not only is it writable from TF-A side, but it's also mapped
cacheable.
I see no explicit cache maintenance in the i.MX SiP code for these two pointer
arguments and haven't been successful to find where in TF-A core code if at all,
complete D-Cache is flushed on SMC exit. Therefore I ask:
- Don't shared non-secure memory buffers between EL3 and lower EL require
explicit cache maintenance?
- Did I miss the place where this cache maintenance is done?
- How did it work so far? barebox does explicit flushing before HAB SiP,
invalidation after. U-Boot doesn't do cache maintenance.
Both apparently work...
Thanks,
Ahmad
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Hello,
I just sent a series to gerrit:
https://review.trustedfirmware.org/c/TF-A/trusted-firmware-a/+/23992.
I'm writing this email to add more context to this series, as I didn't
find how to to it with gerrit.
This series is only the TF-A part to add suspend to RAM support for the
TI K3 J7200 target.
Some modifications are also needed in Linux kernel, U-Boot (R5 SPL) and
DM-Firmware.
During the suspend sequence, TF-A save itself in DRAM, in a reserved
memory region dedicated to lpm.
TF-A will be restored by R5 SPL.
We need to save it in DRAM (which will be in retention mode during
suspend) because as it runs in SRAM, it will be lost once the SOC is
powered-off by the PMIC.
Best Regards,
--
Thomas Richard, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
https://bootlin.com
Hello,
There are multiple occurrences in TFA Code where assert statements are used to handle function arguments. But these assert statements are currently enabled only in debug mode. So, I wanted to know that will there be any harm in continuing to use assert statements in production code as well for handling failures?
Regards,
Nithin S
Hello,
Trusted Firmware-A LTS version 2.8.9 is now available. This release contains the support for the new Errata ABI and Errata Framework along with the conversion patches for all CPUs.
The complete list can be found here<https://ci-builds.trustedfirmware.org/static-files/_5qFfMg2QdoFuFBk6-0oB6Jm…>. We will update the official readthedocs page shortly.
Thanks.