2. Enhance Context Management library for EL3 firmware

Authors

Soby Mathew & Zelalem Aweke

Organization

Arm Limited

Contact

Soby Mathew <soby.mathew@arm.com> & Zelalem Aweke <zelalem.aweke@arm.com>

Status

RFC

2.1. Introduction

The context management library in TF-A provides the basic CPU context initialization and management routines for use by different components in EL3 firmware. The original design of the library was done keeping in mind the 2 world switch and hence this design pattern has been extended to keep up with growing requirements of EL3 firmware. With the introduction of a new Realm world and a separate Root world for EL3 firmware, it is clear that this library needs to be refactored to cater for future enhancements and reduce chances of introducing error in code. This also aligns with the overall goal of reducing EL3 firmware complexity and footprint.

It is expected that the suggestions below could have legacy implications and hence we are mainly targeting SPM/RMM based systems. It is expected that these legacy issues will need to be sorted out as part of implementation on a case by case basis.

2.2. Design Principles

The below section lays down the design principles for re-factoring the context management library :

  1. Decentralized model for context mgmt

    Both the Secure and Realm worlds have associated dispatcher component in EL3 firmware to allow management of their respective worlds. Allowing the dispatcher to own the context for their respective world and moving away from a centralized policy management by context management library will remove the world differentiation code in the library. This also means that the library will not be responsible for CPU feature enablement for Secure and Realm worlds. See point 3 and 4 for more details.

    The Non Secure world does not have a dispatcher component and hence EL3 firmware (BL31)/context management library needs to have routines to help initialize the Non Secure world context.

  2. EL3 should only initialize immediate used lower EL

    Due to the way TF-A evolved, from EL3 interacting with an S-EL1 payload to SPM in S-EL2, there is some code initializing S-EL1 registers which is probably redundant when SPM is present in S-EL2. As a principle, EL3 firmware should only initialize the next immediate lower EL in use. If EL2 needs to be skipped and is not to be used at runtime, then EL3 can do the bare minimal EL2 init and init EL1 to prepare for EL3 exit. It is expected that this skip EL2 configuration is only needed for NS world to support legacy Android deployments. It is worth removing this skip EL2 for Non Secure config support if this is no longer used.

  3. Maintain EL3 sysregs which affect lower EL within CPU context

    The CPU context contains some EL3 sysregs and gets applied on a per-world basis (eg: cptr_el3, scr_el3, zcr_el3 is part of the context because different settings need to be applied between each world). But this design pattern is not enforced in TF-A. It is possible to directly modify EL3 sysreg dynamically during the transition between NS and Secure worlds. Having multiple ways of manipulating EL3 sysregs for different values between the worlds is flaky and error prone. The proposal is to enforce the rule that any EL3 sysreg which can be different between worlds is maintained in the CPU Context. Once the context is initialized the EL3 sysreg values corresponding to the world being entered will be restored.

  4. Allow more flexibility for Dispatchers to select feature set to save and restore

    The current functions for EL2 CPU context save and restore is a single function which takes care of saving and restoring all the registers for EL2. This method is inflexible and it does not allow to dynamically detect CPU features to select registers to save and restore. It also assumes that both Realm and Secure world will have the same feature set enabled from EL3 at runtime and makes it hard to enable different features for each world. The framework should cater for selective save and restore of CPU registers which can be controlled by the dispatcher.

    For the implementation, this could mean that there is a separate assembly save and restore routine corresponding to Arch feature. The memory allocation within the CPU Context for each set of registers will be controlled by a FEAT_xxx build option. It is a valid configuration to have context memory allocated but not used at runtime based on feature detection at runtime or the platform owner has decided not to enable the feature for the particular world.

2.3. Context Allocation and Initialization

context_mgmt_abs

The above figure shows how the CPU context is allocated within TF-A. The allocation for Secure and Realm world is by the respective dispatcher. In the case of NS world, the context is allocated by the PSCI lib. This scheme allows TF-A to be built in various configurations (with or without Secure/Realm worlds) and will result in optimal memory footprint. The Secure and Realm world contexts are initialized by invoking context management library APIs which then initialize each world based on conditional evaluation of the security state of the context. The proposal here is to move the conditional initialization of context for Secure and Realm worlds to their respective dispatchers and have the library do only the common init needed. The library can export helpers to initialize registers corresponding to certain features but should not try to do different initialization between the worlds. The library can also export helpers for initialization of NS CPU Context since there is no dispatcher for that world.

This implies that any world specific code in context mgmt lib should now be migrated to the respective “owners”. To maintain compatibility with legacy, the current functions can be retained in the lib and perhaps define new ones for use by SPMD and RMMD. The details of this can be worked out during implementation.

2.4. Introducing Root Context

Till now, we have been ignoring the fact that Root world (or EL3) itself could have some settings which are distinct from NS/S/Realm worlds. In this case, Root world itself would need to maintain some sysregs settings for its own execution and would need to use sysregs of lower EL (eg: PAuth, pmcr) to enable some functionalities in EL3. The current sequence for context save and restore in TF-A is as given below:

context_mgmt_existing

Note1: The EL3 CPU context is not a homogenous collection of EL3 sysregs but a collection of EL3 and some other lower EL registers. The save and restore is also not done homogenously but based on the objective of using the particular register.

Note2: The EL1 context save and restore can possibly be removed when switching to S-EL2 as SPM can take care of saving the incoming NS EL1 context.

It can be seen that the EL3 sysreg values applied while the execution is in Root world corresponds to the world it came from (eg: if entering EL3 from NS world, the sysregs correspond to the values in NS context). There is a case that EL3 itself may have some settings to apply for various reasons. A good example for this is the cptr_el3 regsiter. Although FPU traps need to be disabled for Non Secure, Secure and Realm worlds, the EL3 execution itself may keep the trap enabled for the sake of robustness. Another example is, if the MTE feature is enabled for a particular world, this feature will be enabled for Root world as well when entering EL3 from that world. The firmware at EL3 may not be expecting this feature to be enabled and may cause unwanted side-effects which could be problematic. Thus it would be more robust if Root world is not subject to EL3 sysreg values from other worlds but maintains its own values which is stable and predictable throughout root world execution.

There is also the case that when EL3 would like to make use of some Architectural feature(s) or do some security hardening, it might need programming of some lower EL sysregs. For example, if EL3 needs to make use of Pointer Authentication (PAuth) feature, it needs to program its own PAuth Keys during execution at EL3. Hence EL3 needs its own copy of PAuth registers which needs to be restored on every entry to EL3. A similar case can be made for DIT bit in PSTATE, or use of SP_EL0 for C Runtime Stack at EL3.

The proposal here is to maintain a separate root world CPU context which gets applied for Root world execution. This is not the full CPU_Context, but subset of EL3 sysregs (el3_sysreg) and lower EL sysregs (root_exc_context) used by EL3. The save and restore sequence for this Root context would need to be done in an optimal way. The el3_sysreg does not need to be saved on EL3 Exit and possibly only some registers in root_exc_context of Root world context would need to be saved on EL3 exit (eg: SP_EL0).

The new sequence for world switch including Root world context would be as given below :

context_mgmt_proposed

Having this framework in place will allow Root world to make use of lower EL registers easily for its own purposes and also have a fixed EL3 sysreg setting which is not affected by the settings of other worlds. This will unify the Root world register usage pattern for its own execution and remove some of the adhoc usages in code.

2.5. Conclusion

Of all the proposals, the introduction of Root world context would likely need further prototyping to confirm the design and we will need to measure the performance and memory impact of this change. Other changes are incremental improvements which are thought to have negligible impact on EL3 performance.


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