[coreboot] [RFC] v3: Stack switching abstraction for C7 and later Intel processors

[Marc Jones]

ron minnich wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 9:31 AM, Marc Jones <Marc.Jones at amd.com> wrote:
> 
>> Why not ret and do a call (or ljmp) from stage0_main to main(). It would
>> make the code easier to follow and it would be easy to add code if anything
>> were required between disable car and the jmp.
>>
> 
> it's just not doable on  some of these hardware implementations. It's
> desirable but not doable. There are going to be cases where
> disable_car resumes somewhere else. So we might as well just get it
> over with and put it in the code ;-)
> 

What is the hardware limitation? I don't know gcc that well, but a lcall 
wouldn't get the correct address on the stack? If not, what about 
passing the return address(or pushing it on the stack). It is more 
complicated to do but it makes the code easier to understand.

A few other comments from this thread.

 > + * returns bottom of stack, when passed an on-stack variable such as a
 > + * parameter or automatic. Stack base must be STACKSIZE aligned
 > + * and STACKSIZE must be a power of 2 for this to work.
 > + * Luckily these rules have always been true.
 >

Also, that was a good catch by Carl-Daniel about that cache stack size 
and alignments. CAR is closely related to MTRRs so I think that the MTRR 
rules should be used here. Or don't have any rules, it is up to the 
caller to get it correct for their CPU.


Marc






-- 
Marc Jones
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