Re: [PATCH 4/4] pc-bios/s390-ccw: Allow building with Clang, too

[Cornelia Huck]

On Mon, 03 May 2021 10:23:20 +0200
Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> wrote:

> David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > On 03.05.21 07:17, Thomas Huth wrote:  
> >> On 03/05/2021 06.58, Markus Armbruster wrote:  
> >>> Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> writes:
> >>>  
> >>>> Clang unfortunately does not support generating code for the z900
> >>>> architecture level and starts with the z10 instead. Thus to be able
> >>>> to support compiling with Clang, we have to check for the supported
> >>>> compiler flags. The disadvantage is of course that the bios image
> >>>> will only run with z10 guest CPUs upwards (which is what most people
> >>>> use anyway), so just in case let's also emit a warning in that case.  
> >>>
> >>> What happens when you try to use this bios with an old CPU anyway?  
> >> 
> >> Interesting question. I was expecting the guest to crash since it would be
> >> using a CPU instruction that is not supported on the old CPU model. But I
> >> just gave it a try, and there was no crash. The guest booted just fine.
> >> Either Clang only emits instructions that work with the old z900 anyway, or
> >> our emulation in QEMU is imprecise and we allow newer instructions to be
> >> executed on old models, too.  
> >
> > Yes, that's currently still done. We once thought about disabling that 
> > (there was a patch from Richard), but decided against it because -- back 
> > then -- the default QEMU model was still very basic and would have 
> > essentially disabled all more recent instructions as default.
> >
> > We can most probably do that change soon as we have a "fairly new" 
> > default QEMU CPU model. I can glue it to my z14 change.  
> 
> In case this makes the BIOS crash with old CPUs: when a guest refuses to
> start because the BIOS was compiled the wrong way for it, configure
> having told you so back then is not a nice user experience.  Can we do
> better, with reasonable effort?

I fear the experience will be as bad as for any guest that is using
features from a newer cpu level (i.e. random crashes when the guest
actually tries to use that newer instruction.)

I see two options:
- Just try to start and hope that it works.
- Deprecate any cpu model older than z10.

Anyone have a better idea? I don't particularly like any of the two.