mips64emul documentation: Experimenting with mips64emul

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Experimenting with mips64emul


Hello world:

You might want to use the emulator to develop programs on your own, not just run precompiled kernels such as NetBSD. To get started, I recommend that you do two things:

The emulator can be run in a mode where it doesn't emulate a real machine. In this "bare" machine mode, only a few simple devices are emulated, such as putchar device, and a simple framebuffer (for outputing pixels in a simple manner).

 
/*  Hello world for mips64emul  */

/*  Note: The cast to a signed int causes the address to be sign-extended
    correctly to 0xffffffffb00000xx when compiled in 64-bit mode  */
#define	PUTCHAR_ADDRESS		((signed int)0xb0000000)
#define	HALT_ADDRESS		((signed int)0xb0000010)

void printchar(char ch)
{
	*((volatile unsigned char *) PUTCHAR_ADDRESS) = ch;
}

void halt(void)
{
	*((volatile unsigned char *) HALT_ADDRESS) = 0;
}

void printstr(char *s)
{
	while (*s)
		printchar(*s++);
}

void f(void)
{
	printstr("Hello world\n");
	halt();
}
This hello world program is available here as well: hello_mips.c

I recommend that you build a GCC cross compiler for the mips64-unknown-elf target, and install it. Other compilers could work too, but GCC is good because of its portability. Then try to compile the hello world program:

	$ mips64-unknown-elf-gcc -O2 hello_mips.c -mips4 -mabi=64 -c
	$ mips64-unknown-elf-ld -Ttext 0xa800000000030000 -e f hello_mips.o -o hello_mips --oformat=elf64-bigmips
	$ file hello_mips
	hello_mips: ELF 64-bit MSB mips-4 executable, MIPS R3000_BE, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, not stripped
	$ ./mips64emul -q -E testmips hello_mips
	Hello world

	$ mips64-unknown-elf-gcc -O2 hello_mips.c -c
	$ mips64-unknown-elf-ld -Ttext 0x80030000 -e f hello_mips.o -o hello_mips
	$ file hello_mips
	hello_mips: ELF 32-bit MSB mips-3 executable, MIPS R3000_BE, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, not stripped
	$ ./mips64emul -q -E testmips hello_mips
	Hello world

As you can see above, a GCC configured for mips64-unknown-elf can produce both 64-bit and 32-bit binaries. If you don't want to run the entire Hello World program, but want to single-step through the execution to learn more about how MIPS programs run, then add -V to the command line:

	$ ./mips64emul -V -E testmips hello_mips
	..
	mips64emul> r
	cpu0:    pc = a800000000030078    
	cpu0:    hi = 0000000000000000    lo = 0000000000000000
	cpu0:    zr = 0000000000000000    at = 0000000000000000
	cpu0:    v0 = 0000000000000000    v1 = 0000000000000000
	..
	cpu0:    gp = a8000000000780c0    sp = ffffffffa0007f00
	cpu0:    fp = 0000000000000000    ra = 0000000000000000
	mips64emul> s 15
	<f>
	a800000000030078: 67bdfff0      daddiu  sp,sp,-16
	a80000000003007c: 3c04a800      lui     a0,0xa800
	a800000000030080: 3c010003      lui     at,0x3
	a800000000030084: 64840000      daddiu  a0,a0,0
	a800000000030088: 642100b8      daddiu  at,at,184
	a80000000003008c: 0004203c      dsll32  a0,a0,0
	a800000000030090: 0081202d      daddu   a0,a0,at
	a800000000030094: ffbf0000      sd      ra,0(sp)           [0xffffffffa0007ef0, data=0x0000000000000000]
	a800000000030098: 0c00c00a      jal     0xa800000000030028 <printstr>
	a80000000003009c: 00000000 (d)  nop
	  <printstr("Hello world\n",0,0,0,..)>
	<printstr>
	a800000000030028: 67bdfff0      daddiu  sp,sp,-16
	a80000000003002c: ffb00000      sd      s0,0(sp)           [0xffffffffa0007ee0, data=0x0000000000000000]
	a800000000030030: ffbf0008      sd      ra,8(sp)           [0xffffffffa0007ee8, data=0xa8000000000300a0]
	a800000000030034: 90820000      lbu     v0,0(a0)           [0xa8000000000300b8 = $LC0, data=0x48]
	a800000000030038: 00021600      sll     v0,v0,24
	mips64emul> print v0
	v0 = 0x0000000048000000
	mips64emul> _

The syntax of the single-step debugger shouldn't be too hard to grasp. Type 's' to single-step one instruction. Just pressing enter after that will repeat the 's' command. Type 'quit' to quit.

Hopefully this is enough to get you inspired. :-)


Hello World for mips64emul's PPC mode

mips64emul also has an experimental PowerPC emulation mode (which is only enabled if --enable-ppc is supplied as a configure option). hello_ppc.c is similar to hello_mips.c, but should be compiled and run as follows:

	$ ppc-unknown-elf-gcc -O2 hello_ppc.c -c
	$ ppc-unknown-elf-ld -e f hello_ppc.o -o hello_ppc
	$ file hello_ppc
	hello_ppc: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, PowerPC or cisco 4500,
	  version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, not stripped
	$ ./mips64emul -q -E testppc hello_ppc
	Hello world

[ 2005-02-18: I haven't yet been able to build a GCC for ppc64 (only the binutils toolchain), because the gcc sources seem to include Linux header files that aren't present on my FreeBSD system. 32-bit PPC works ok, though. ]


Experimental devices:

The "bare" MIPS machine has the following experimental devices:

cons:

This is a simple console device, for writing characters to the controlling terminal.

Source code:  devices/dev_cons.c
Default physical address:  0x10000000

 
Offset:      Effect:
0x0000 Read: getchar() (non-blocking)
Write: putchar(ch)
0x0010 Read or write: halt()
(Useful for exiting the emulator.)
 
mp:

This device controls the behaviour of CPUs in an emulated multi-processor system.

Source code:  devices/dev_mp.c
Default physical address:  0x11000000

Offset:      Effect:
0x0000 Read: whoami(). Returns the id of the CPU doing the read.
0x0010 Read: ncpus(). Returns the number of CPUs in the system.
0x0020 Write: startupcpu(i). Starts CPU i. It begins execution at the address set by a write to startupaddr (see below).
0x0030 Write: startupaddr(addr). Sets the starting address for CPUs.
0x0040 Write: pause_addr(addr). Sets the pause address. (TODO: This is not used anymore?)
0x0050 Write: pause_cpu(i). Stops all CPUs except CPU i.
0x0060 Write: unpause_cpu(i). Unpauses all CPUs except CPU i.
0x0070 Write: startupstack(addr). Sets the startup stack address. (CPUs started with startupcpu() above will have their stack pointer set to this value.)
0x0080 Read: hardware_random(). This produces a "random" number.
0x0090 Read: memory(). Returns the number of bytes of RAM in the system.
 
fb:

A simple linear framebuffer, for graphics output. 640 x 480 pixels, 3 bytes per pixel (red, green, blue, 8 bits each).

Source code:  devices/dev_fb.c
Default physical address:  0x12000000

Offset:      Effect:
... Read: read pixel values.
Write: write pixel values.

While these devices may resemble real-world hardware, they are intentionally made simpler to use. (An exception is the framebuffer; some machines actually have simple linear framebuffers like this.)

If the physical address is 0x10000000, then for MIPS that means that it can be accessed at virtual address 0xffffffffb0000000. (Actually it can be accessed at 0xffffffff90000000 too, but devices should usually be accessed in a non-cached manner.)

(When using the bare PPC test machine, "testppc", the addresses are 0x10000000, 0x11000000 etc., so no need to add any virtual displacement.)

The mp device is agnostic when it comes to word-length. For example, when reading offset 0x0000 of the mp device, you may use any kind of read (an 8-bit read will work just as well as a 64-bit read, although the value will be truncated to 8 bits in the first case).

The cons device should be accessed using 8-bit reads and writes. Doing a getchar() (ie reading from offset 0x0000) returns 0x00 if no character was available.

On MIPS, the cons device is hardwired to interrupt 2 (the lowest hardware interrupt). Whenever a character is available, the interrupt is asserted. When there are no more available characters, the interrupt is deasserted. (Remember that the interrupt has to be enabled in the status register of the system coprocessor.)


Experiments with other kernels and guest OSes:

Operating system kernels and other test programs can be downloaded from various places. Here are links to some of the kernels that I usually experiment with.

NOTE: This is not a list of kernels that work in the emulator. It is a list of kernels that I experiment with.

For more information about which of these that actually work, read the section in the Introduction chapter that lists guest operating systems. If a system is not listed there, it probably doesn't work in mips64emul.

The following work even less than the ones listed above:

The following don't work at all, actually, because the PPC and SPARC modes are just skeletons so far. (To enable PPC and/or SPARC support, add --enable-ppc and --enable-sparc to the configure command line, respectively.)