Hi All,

Based on feedback, below is the updated draft proposal of the
SBI Debug Console Extension ...

The motivations behind this proposal is as follows:
1) There is no new SBI extension replacing the legacy SBI v0.1
putchar() and getchar() calls. These legacy SBI v0.1 calls are
now disabled by default in Linux and will be eventually deprecated.
We need a replacement at least for the SBI v0.1 putchar() which
is widely used for early prints in various OSes and Bootloaders.
2) The OS-A Platforms (or SEE) specification need to mandate
a particular type of UART (8250, ns16550, or SiFive) as a standard
way for boot-time early prints in supervisor-mode software. Using
SBI debug console extension, the OS-A Platforms (or SEE)
specifications don't need to mandate any type of UART.
3) The legacy SBI v0.1 putchar() only supports printing one
character at a time. For some of the hypervisors (particularly KVM),
SBI based early prints (i.e. earlycon=sbi) is slow because each
SBI v0.1 putchar() trap will be forwarded to the KVM user-space
(KVMTOOL or QEMU).

In other words, the SBI debug console extension defines a standard
way for boot-time early prints in supervisor-mode software.

We have completed the proof-of-concept implementation of this
SBI extension proposal. Refer, "riscv_sbi_dbcn_v1" branch in the
following repos:
https://github.com/avpatel/opensbi.git
https://github.com/avpatel/linux.git
https://github.com/avpatel/kvmtool.git

Please review it and provide your feedback.

Regards,
Anup

SBI Debug Console Extension (EID #0x4442434E "DBCN")
====================================================

The debug console extension defines a generic mechanism for boot
time early prints from supervisor-mode software which allows users
to catch boot-time issues in supervisor-mode software.

This extension replaces the legacy console putchar (EID #0x01)
extension with following improvements:
1) It follows the new calling convention defined by the SBI v1.0
(or higher) specification.
2) It allows supervisor software to print multiple characters
in a single SBI call.

Some of the functions defined by this SBI extension have physical
memory as parameters for input and/or output. This physical memory
parameter MUST satisfy following requirements:
1) The SBI implementation MUST check that the supervisor-mode
software is allowed to read and write the specified physical
memory on the calling HART.
2) The SBI implementation MUST access the specified physical
memory using the PMA attribute.
Note: If the supervisor-mode software access the same physical
memory using memory type different from PMA then a loss of
coherence or unexpected memory ordering may occur and the
invoking software should follow the rules and sequences defined
in the RISC-V Svpbmt specification to prevent the loss of
coherence and memory ordering.

If the underlying physical console has extra bits for error checking
(or correction) then these extra bits should be handled by the SBI
implementation.

Function: Console Puts (FID #0)
-------------------------------

struct sbiret sbi_debug_console_puts(unsigned long addr_lo,
unsigned long addr_hi,
unsigned long num_chars)

Print a specified input string on the debug console.

The physical base address and size of the string to be printed is
derived from parameters as follows:
1) `addr_lo` parameter specifies the lower XLEN bits of the string
physical base address.
2) `addr_hi` parameter specifies the string physical base address
right shifted by XLEN.
3) `num_chars` parameter specifies the size of the string as the
number of characters (or bytes).

This is a blocking SBI call and will only return after printing all
characters of the string.

Errors:
SBI_SUCCESS - Characters printed successfully.
SBI_ERR_INVALID_ADDRESS - The string pointed by `addr_lo`, `addr_hi`,
and `num_chars` parameters is not accessible
to supervisor-mode.
SBI_ERR_FAILED - Failed to print characters due to I/O errors.