DAWR issues on POWER9 ============================ On POWER9 the DAWR can cause a checkstop if it points to cache inhibited (CI) memory. Currently Linux has no way to disinguish CI memory when configuring the DAWR, so (for now) the DAWR is disabled by this commit: commit 9654153158d3e0684a1bdb76dbababdb7111d5a0 Author: Michael Neuling Date: Tue Mar 27 15:37:24 2018 +1100 powerpc: Disable DAWR in the base POWER9 CPU features Technical Details: ============================ DAWR has 6 different ways of being set. 1) ptrace 2) h_set_mode(DAWR) 3) h_set_dabr() 4) kvmppc_set_one_reg() 5) xmon For ptrace, we now advertise zero breakpoints on POWER9 via the PPC_PTRACE_GETHWDBGINFO call. This results in GDB falling back to software emulation of the watchpoint (which is slow). h_set_mode(DAWR) and h_set_dabr() will now return an error to the guest on a POWER9 host. Current Linux guests ignore this error, so they will silently not get the DAWR. kvmppc_set_one_reg() will store the value in the vcpu but won't actually set it on POWER9 hardware. This is done so we don't break migration from POWER8 to POWER9, at the cost of silently losing the DAWR on the migration. For xmon, the 'bd' command will return an error on P9. Consequences for users ============================ For GDB watchpoints (ie 'watch' command) on POWER9 bare metal , GDB will accept the command. Unfortunately since there is no hardware support for the watchpoint, GDB will software emulate the watchpoint making it run very slowly. The same will also be true for any guests started on a POWER9 host. The watchpoint will fail and GDB will fall back to software emulation. If a guest is started on a POWER8 host, GDB will accept the watchpoint and configure the hardware to use the DAWR. This will run at full speed since it can use the hardware emulation. Unfortunately if this guest is migrated to a POWER9 host, the watchpoint will be lost on the POWER9. Loads and stores to the watchpoint locations will not be trapped in GDB. The watchpoint is remembered, so if the guest is migrated back to the POWER8 host, it will start working again.