ARM: 6497/1: kexec: Correct data alignment for CONFIG_THUMB2_KERNEL
authorDave Martin <dave.martin@linaro.org>
Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:43:21 +0000 (19:43 +0100)
committerRussell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>
Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:44:23 +0000 (13:44 +0000)
Directives such as .long and .word do not magically cause the
assembler location counter to become aligned in gas.  As a result,
using these directives in code sections can result in misaligned
data words when building a Thumb-2 kernel (CONFIG_THUMB2_KERNEL).

This is a Bad Thing, since the ABI permits the compiler to assume
that fundamental types of word size or above are word- aligned when
accessing them from C.  If the data is not really word-aligned,
this can cause impaired performance and stray alignment faults in
some circumstances.

In general, the following rules should be applied when using data
word declaration directives inside code sections:

    * .quad and .double:
         .align 3

    * .long, .word, .single, .float:
         .align (or .align 2)

    * .short:
        No explicit alignment required, since Thumb-2
        instructions are always 2 or 4 bytes in size.
        immediately after an instruction.

Reviewed-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Dave Martin <dave.martin@linaro.org>
Acked-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>
arch/arm/kernel/relocate_kernel.S

index fd26f8d65151a949e6ecff394f0146258882b9d6..9cf4cbf8f95b8ca9eef1baf1d8f49054999304f8 100644 (file)
@@ -59,6 +59,8 @@ relocate_new_kernel:
        ldr r2,kexec_boot_atags
        mov pc,lr
 
+       .align
+
        .globl kexec_start_address
 kexec_start_address:
        .long   0x0