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ARM topology binding description
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1 - Introduction
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In an ARM system, the hierarchy of CPUs is defined through three entities that
are used to describe the layout of physical CPUs in the system:
- cluster
- core
- thread
The cpu nodes (bindings defined in [1]) represent the devices that
correspond to physical CPUs and are to be mapped to the hierarchy levels.
The bottom hierarchy level sits at core or thread level depending on whether
symmetric multi-threading (SMT) is supported or not.
For instance in a system where CPUs support SMT, "cpu" nodes represent all
threads existing in the system and map to the hierarchy level "thread" above.
In systems where SMT is not supported "cpu" nodes represent all cores present
in the system and map to the hierarchy level "core" above.
ARM topology bindings allow one to associate cpu nodes with hierarchical groups
corresponding to the system hierarchy; syntactically they are defined as device
tree nodes.
The remainder of this document provides the topology bindings for ARM, based
on the ePAPR standard, available from:
http://www.power.org/documentation/epapr-version-1-1/
If not stated otherwise, whenever a reference to a cpu node phandle is made its
value must point to a cpu node compliant with the cpu node bindings as
documented in [1].
A topology description containing phandles to cpu nodes that are not compliant
with bindings standardized in [1] is therefore considered invalid.
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2 - cpu-map node
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The ARM CPU topology is defined within the cpu-map node, which is a direct
child of the cpus node and provides a container where the actual topology
nodes are listed.
- cpu-map node
Usage: Optional - On ARM SMP systems provide CPUs topology to the OS.
ARM uniprocessor systems do not require a topology
description and therefore should not define a
cpu-map node.
Description: The cpu-map node is just a container node where its
subnodes describe the CPU topology.
Node name must be "cpu-map".
The cpu-map node's parent node must be the cpus node.
The cpu-map node's child nodes can be:
- one or more cluster nodes
Any other configuration is considered invalid.
The cpu-map node can only contain three types of child nodes:
- cluster node
- core node
- thread node
whose bindings are described in paragraph 3.
The nodes describing the CPU topology (cluster/core/thread) can only
be defined within the cpu-map node and every core/thread in the system
must be defined within the topology. Any other configuration is
invalid and therefore must be ignored.
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2.1 - cpu-map child nodes naming convention
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cpu-map child nodes must follow a naming convention where the node name
must be "clusterN", "coreN", "threadN" depending on the node type (ie
cluster/core/thread) (where N = {0, 1, ...} is the node number; nodes which
are siblings within a single common parent node must be given a unique and
sequential N value, starting from 0).
cpu-map child nodes which do not share a common parent node can have the same
name (ie same number N as other cpu-map child nodes at different device tree
levels) since name uniqueness will be guaranteed by the device tree hierarchy.
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3 - cluster/core/thread node bindings
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Bindings for cluster/cpu/thread nodes are defined as follows:
- cluster node
Description: must be declared within a cpu-map node, one node
per cluster. A system can contain several layers of
clustering and cluster nodes can be contained in parent
cluster nodes.
The cluster node name must be "clusterN" as described in 2.1 above.
A cluster node can not be a leaf node.
A cluster node's child nodes must be:
- one or more cluster nodes; or
- one or more core nodes
Any other configuration is considered invalid.
- core node
Description: must be declared in a cluster node, one node per core in
the cluster. If the system does not support SMT, core
nodes are leaf nodes, otherwise they become containers of
thread nodes.
The core node name must be "coreN" as described in 2.1 above.
A core node must be a leaf node if SMT is not supported.
Properties for core nodes that are leaf nodes:
- cpu
Usage: required
Value type: <phandle>
Definition: a phandle to the cpu node that corresponds to the
core node.
If a core node is not a leaf node (CPUs supporting SMT) a core node's
child nodes can be:
- one or more thread nodes
Any other configuration is considered invalid.
- thread node
Description: must be declared in a core node, one node per thread
in the core if the system supports SMT. Thread nodes are
always leaf nodes in the device tree.
The thread node name must be "threadN" as described in 2.1 above.
A thread node must be a leaf node.
A thread node must contain the following property:
- cpu
Usage: required
Value type: <phandle>
Definition: a phandle to the cpu node that corresponds to
the thread node.
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4 - Example dts
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Example 1 (ARM 64-bit, 16-cpu system, two clusters of clusters):
cpus {
#size-cells = <0>;
#address-cells = <2>;
cpu-map {
cluster0 {
cluster0 {
core0 {
thread0 {
cpu = <&CPU0>;
};
thread1 {
cpu = <&CPU1>;
};
};
core1 {
thread0 {
cpu = <&CPU2>;
};
thread1 {
cpu = <&CPU3>;
};
};
};
cluster1 {
core0 {
thread0 {
cpu = <&CPU4>;
};
thread1 {
cpu = <&CPU5>;
};
};
core1 {
thread0 {
cpu = <&CPU6>;
};
thread1 {
cpu = <&CPU7>;
};
};
};
};
cluster1 {
cluster0 {
core0 {
thread0 {
cpu = <&CPU8>;
};
thread1 {
cpu = <&CPU9>;
};
};
core1 {
thread0 {
cpu = <&CPU10>;
};
thread1 {
cpu = <&CPU11>;
};
};
};
cluster1 {
core0 {
thread0 {
cpu = <&CPU12>;
};
thread1 {
cpu = <&CPU13>;
};
};
core1 {
thread0 {
cpu = <&CPU14>;
};
thread1 {
cpu = <&CPU15>;
};
};
};
};
};
CPU0: cpu@0 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x0 0x0>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU1: cpu@1 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x0 0x1>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU2: cpu@100 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x0 0x100>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU3: cpu@101 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x0 0x101>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU4: cpu@10000 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x0 0x10000>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU5: cpu@10001 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x0 0x10001>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU6: cpu@10100 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x0 0x10100>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU7: cpu@10101 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x0 0x10101>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU8: cpu@100000000 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x1 0x0>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU9: cpu@100000001 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x1 0x1>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU10: cpu@100000100 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x1 0x100>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU11: cpu@100000101 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x1 0x101>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU12: cpu@100010000 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x1 0x10000>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU13: cpu@100010001 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x1 0x10001>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU14: cpu@100010100 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x1 0x10100>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
CPU15: cpu@100010101 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a57";
reg = <0x1 0x10101>;
enable-method = "spin-table";
cpu-release-addr = <0 0x20000000>;
};
};
Example 2 (ARM 32-bit, dual-cluster, 8-cpu system, no SMT):
cpus {
#size-cells = <0>;
#address-cells = <1>;
cpu-map {
cluster0 {
core0 {
cpu = <&CPU0>;
};
core1 {
cpu = <&CPU1>;
};
core2 {
cpu = <&CPU2>;
};
core3 {
cpu = <&CPU3>;
};
};
cluster1 {
core0 {
cpu = <&CPU4>;
};
core1 {
cpu = <&CPU5>;
};
core2 {
cpu = <&CPU6>;
};
core3 {
cpu = <&CPU7>;
};
};
};
CPU0: cpu@0 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a15";
reg = <0x0>;
};
CPU1: cpu@1 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a15";
reg = <0x1>;
};
CPU2: cpu@2 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a15";
reg = <0x2>;
};
CPU3: cpu@3 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a15";
reg = <0x3>;
};
CPU4: cpu@100 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a7";
reg = <0x100>;
};
CPU5: cpu@101 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a7";
reg = <0x101>;
};
CPU6: cpu@102 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a7";
reg = <0x102>;
};
CPU7: cpu@103 {
device_type = "cpu";
compatible = "arm,cortex-a7";
reg = <0x103>;
};
};
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[1] ARM Linux kernel documentation
Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/cpus.txt