Intel® Stratix® 10 DX Device Errata

ID 683249
Date 11/01/2022
Public
Document Table of Contents

3.17. 855829: Reads of PMEVCNTR<n> are not Masked by HDCR.HPMN

Description

Software executing at EL2 can set the HDCR.HPMN and MDCR_EL2.HPMN field to restrict non-secure EL0 and EL1 software from accessing a subset of the performance counters. If n > HPMN, then Performance Counter n (PMEVCNTR<n>) register is not accessible to non-secure EL0 or EL1. Because of this erratum, Cortex-A53 reads of inaccessible registers might not return zero as expected, but instead might read the actual contents of the counter registers.

For this erratum to be present:
  1. The processor is executing at non-secure EL1 or EL0.
  2. HDCR.HPMN and MDCR_EL2.HPMN are set to a value n, where n < 6.
  3. A read of PMEVCNTR<n> and PMEVCNTR<n>_EL0 is executed.

Impact

If the conditions described above are met, then non-secure EL0 and EL1 software can read the values of performance counters reserved for EL2.

Workaround

Software executing at EL2 can set the HDCR.TPM and MDCR_EL2.TPM bit. This configuration causes all non-secure EL0 and EL1 accesses to performance monitor registers to trap to EL2. The EL2 software can then emulate accesses as required, and can mask out accesses to reserved registers.

Category

Category 3