KVM implements the PSCI (Power State Coordination Interface)
specification in order to provide services such as CPU on/off, reset
and power-off to the guest.
The PSCI specification is regularly updated to provide new features,
and KVM implements these updates if they make sense from a virtualization
point of view.
This means that a guest booted on two different versions of KVM can
observe two different “firmware” revisions. This could cause issues if
a given guest is tied to a particular PSCI revision (unlikely), or if
a migration causes a different PSCI version to be exposed out of the
blue to an unsuspecting guest.
In order to remedy this situation, KVM exposes a set of “firmware
pseudo-registers” that can be manipulated using the GET/SET_ONE_REG
interface. These registers can be saved/restored by userspace, and set
to a convenient value if required.
The following register is defined:
KVM_REG_ARM_PSCI_VERSION:
- Only valid if the vcpu has the KVM_ARM_VCPU_PSCI_0_2 feature set
(and thus has already been initialized) - Returns the current PSCI version on GET_ONE_REG (defaulting to the
highest PSCI version implemented by KVM and compatible with v0.2) - Allows any PSCI version implemented by KVM and compatible with
v0.2 to be set with SET_ONE_REG - Affects the whole VM (even if the register view is per-vcpu)
- Only valid if the vcpu has the KVM_ARM_VCPU_PSCI_0_2 feature set
