spu_run¶
Name¶
spu_run - execute an spu context
Synopsis¶
#include <sys/spu.h> int spu_run(int fd, unsigned int *npc, unsigned int *event);
Description¶
The spu_run system call is used on PowerPC machines that implement the Cell Broadband Engine Architecture in order to access Synergistic Pro- cessor Units (SPUs). It uses the fd that was returned from spu_cre- ate(2) to address a specific SPU context. When the context gets sched- uled to a physical SPU, it starts execution at the instruction pointer passed in npc.
Execution of SPU code happens synchronously, meaning that spu_run does not return while the SPU is still running. If there is a need to exe- cute SPU code in parallel with other code on either the main CPU or other SPUs, you need to create a new thread of execution first, e.g. using the pthread_create(3) call.
When spu_run returns, the current value of the SPU instruction pointer is written back to npc, so you can call spu_run again without updating the pointers.
event can be a NULL pointer or point to an extended status code that gets filled when spu_run returns. It can be one of the following con- stants:
- SPE_EVENT_DMA_ALIGNMENT
- A DMA alignment error
- SPE_EVENT_SPE_DATA_SEGMENT
- A DMA segmentation error
- SPE_EVENT_SPE_DATA_STORAGE
- A DMA storage error
If NULL is passed as the event argument, these errors will result in a signal delivered to the calling process.
Return Value¶
spu_run returns the value of the spu_status register or -1 to indicate an error and set errno to one of the error codes listed below. The spu_status register value contains a bit mask of status codes and optionally a 14 bit code returned from the stop-and-signal instruction on the SPU. The bit masks for the status codes are:
- 0x02
- SPU was stopped by stop-and-signal.
- 0x04
- SPU was stopped by halt.
- 0x08
- SPU is waiting for a channel.
- 0x10
- SPU is in single-step mode.
- 0x20
- SPU has tried to execute an invalid instruction.
- 0x40
- SPU has tried to access an invalid channel.
- 0x3fff0000
- The bits masked with this value contain the code returned from stop-and-signal.
There are always one or more of the lower eight bits set or an error code is returned from spu_run.
Errors¶
- EAGAIN or EWOULDBLOCK
- fd is in non-blocking mode and spu_run would block.
EBADF fd is not a valid file descriptor.
- EFAULT npc is not a valid pointer or status is neither NULL nor a valid
- pointer.
- EINTR A signal occurred while spu_run was in progress. The npc value
- has been updated to the new program counter value if necessary.
EINVAL fd is not a file descriptor returned from spu_create(2).
- ENOMEM Insufficient memory was available to handle a page fault result-
- ing from an MFC direct memory access.
- ENOSYS the functionality is not provided by the current system, because
- either the hardware does not provide SPUs or the spufs module is not loaded.
Notes¶
spu_run is meant to be used from libraries that implement a more abstract interface to SPUs, not to be used from regular applications. See http://www.bsc.es/projects/deepcomputing/linuxoncell/ for the rec- ommended libraries.
Conforming to¶
This call is Linux specific and only implemented by the ppc64 architec- ture. Programs using this system call are not portable.
Bugs¶
The code does not yet fully implement all features lined out here.
Author¶
Arnd Bergmann <arndb@de.ibm.com>
See Also¶
capabilities(7), close(2), spu_create(2), spufs(7)