qemu/docs/specs/ppc-spapr-hcalls.txt
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   1When used with the "pseries" machine type, QEMU-system-ppc64 implements
   2a set of hypervisor calls using a subset of the server "PAPR" specification
   3(IBM internal at this point), which is also what IBM's proprietary hypervisor
   4adheres too.
   5
   6The subset is selected based on the requirements of Linux as a guest.
   7
   8In addition to those calls, we have added our own private hypervisor
   9calls which are mostly used as a private interface between the firmware
  10running in the guest and QEMU.
  11
  12All those hypercalls start at hcall number 0xf000 which correspond
  13to an implementation specific range in PAPR.
  14
  15- H_RTAS (0xf000)
  16
  17RTAS is a set of runtime services generally provided by the firmware
  18inside the guest to the operating system. It predates the existence
  19of hypervisors (it was originally an extension to Open Firmware) and
  20is still used by PAPR to provide various services that aren't performance
  21sensitive.
  22
  23We currently implement the RTAS services in QEMU itself. The actual RTAS
  24"firmware" blob in the guest is a small stub of a few instructions which
  25calls our private H_RTAS hypervisor call to pass the RTAS calls to QEMU.
  26
  27Arguments:
  28
  29  r3 : H_RTAS (0xf000)
  30  r4 : Guest physical address of RTAS parameter block
  31
  32Returns:
  33
  34  H_SUCCESS   : Successfully called the RTAS function (RTAS result
  35                will have been stored in the parameter block)
  36  H_PARAMETER : Unknown token
  37
  38- H_LOGICAL_MEMOP (0xf001)
  39
  40When the guest runs in "real mode" (in powerpc lingua this means
  41with MMU disabled, ie guest effective == guest physical), it only
  42has access to a subset of memory and no IOs.
  43
  44PAPR provides a set of hypervisor calls to perform cacheable or
  45non-cacheable accesses to any guest physical addresses that the
  46guest can use in order to access IO devices while in real mode.
  47
  48This is typically used by the firmware running in the guest.
  49
  50However, doing a hypercall for each access is extremely inefficient
  51(even more so when running KVM) when accessing the frame buffer. In
  52that case, things like scrolling become unusably slow.
  53
  54This hypercall allows the guest to request a "memory op" to be applied
  55to memory. The supported memory ops at this point are to copy a range
  56of memory (supports overlap of source and destination) and XOR which
  57is used by our SLOF firmware to invert the screen.
  58
  59Arguments:
  60
  61  r3: H_LOGICAL_MEMOP (0xf001)
  62  r4: Guest physical address of destination
  63  r5: Guest physical address of source
  64  r6: Individual element size
  65        0 = 1 byte
  66        1 = 2 bytes
  67        2 = 4 bytes
  68        3 = 8 bytes
  69  r7: Number of elements
  70  r8: Operation
  71        0 = copy
  72        1 = xor
  73
  74Returns:
  75
  76  H_SUCCESS   : Success
  77  H_PARAMETER : Invalid argument
  78
  79