[ipxe-devel] Big real mode use in ipxe

[Avi Kivity]

ipxe contains the following snippet:

	/* Copy ROM to image source PMM block */
	pushw	%es
	xorw	%ax, %ax
	movw	%ax, %es
	movl	%esi, %edi
	xorl	%esi, %esi
	movzbl	romheader_size, %ecx
	shll	$9, %ecx
	addr32 rep movsb	/* PMM presence implies flat real mode */

Which copies an image to %edi, with %edi >= 0x10000.  This is in accordance with the PMM spec:

"3.2.4 Accessing Extended Memory

This section specifies how clients should access extended memory blocks allocated by the PMM. When control is passed to an option ROM from a BIOS that supports PMM, the processor will be in big real mode, and Gate A20 will be disabled (segment wrap turned off). This allows access to extended memory blocks using real mode addressing.

In big real mode, access to memory above 1MB can be accomplished by using a 32-bit extended index register (EDI, etc.) and setting the segment register to 0000h. The following code example assumes that the pmmAllocate function was just called to allocate a block of extended memory, and DX:AX returned the 32-bit buffer address.

; Assume here that DX:AX contains the 32-bit address of our allocated buffer.
; Clear the DS segment register.
push 0000h
pop ds
; Put the DX:AX 32-bit buffer address into EDI.
mov di, dx
; Get the upper word.
shl edi, 16
; Shift it to upper EDI.
mov di, ax
; Get the lower word.
; Example: clear the first four bytes of the extended memory buffer.
mov [edi], 00000000h
; DS:EDI is used as the memory pointer.

In a similar way, the other segment registers and 32-bit index registers can be used for extended memory
accessing."

So far so good.  But the Intel SDM says (20.1.1):

"The IA-32 processors beginning with the Intel386 processor can generate 32-bit offsets using an address override prefix; however, in real-address mode, the value of
a 32-bit offset may not exceed FFFFH without causing an exception. For full compatibility with Intel 286 real-address mode, pseudo-protection faults (interrupt 12 or 13) occur if a 32-bit offset is generated outside the range 0 through FFFFH."

Which is exactly what happens here.  My understanding of big real mode is that to achieve a segment limit != 0xffff, you must go into 32-bit protected mode, load a segment with a larger limit, and return into real mode without touching the segment.  The next load of the segment will reset the limit to 0xffff.

Due to bugs in both qemu tcg and kvm, limit checks are not enforced in real mode, but once this bugs are fixed, the code above will break.

The PMM spec also has this to say (1.3):

"Big Real Mode

Big Real Mode is a modified version of the processor’s real mode with the segment limits changed from 1MB to 4GB. Big real mode allows the BIOS or an Option ROM to read and write extended memory without the overhead of protected mode. The BIOS puts the processor in big real mode during POST to allow simplified access to extended memory. The processor will be in big real mode while the PMM Services are callable."

This is more in line with the Intel spec, and means that the modification to %es must be avoided (and that seabios needs changes to either work in big real mode, or to put the processor back into big real mode after returning from a PMM service.

The whole thing is very unfortunate, as kvm is very slow while in big real mode, on certain processors.

-- 
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function