Hi Andrew,

I’m not sure the sstatus.SUM bit is providing the equivalent of LDTR/STTR. The pair of load/store instructions lower their privilege level so that if they end up access privileged locations, they will fault. On the other hand, when status.SUM==1, even if the page is marked as “User”, supervisor code can still access it.

From section 3.1.6.3 in the Privileged ISA spec:

The SUM (permit Supervisor User Memory access) bit modifies the privilege with which S-mode

loads and stores access virtual memory. When SUM=0, S-mode memory accesses to pages that are

accessible by U-mode (U=1 in Figure 4.17) will fault. When SUM=1, these accesses are permitted.

SUM has no effect when page-based virtual memory is not in effect. Note that, while SUM is

ordinarily ignored when not executing in S-mode, it is in effect when MPRV=1 and MPP=S. SUM

is hardwired to 0 if S-mode is not supported.

There is nothing mentioning what would happen if load/store instructions in S-mode attempt locations that require privilege. That means to me they are permitted when sstatus.SUM==1. This behaviour is fine in itself, but doesn’t match what the LDTR/STTR instructions do. I think sstatus.SUM’s equivalent is PSTATE.PAN, not LDTR/STTR. In other words, LDTR/STTR has no equivalent in RISC-V, AFAIK.

Regards,

Freddie