5. Change Log

5.1. v2.10

5.1.1. Highlights

  • FF-A v1.2 (continued adoption):

    • FFA_YIELD interface:

      • Allow to be invoked while endpoint’s partition runtime model is either direct message request or secure interrupt handling.

      • Allow an endpoint to specify an optional timeout such that it can be rescheduled after appropriate time to avoid busy wait.

    • Handle the FFA_ERROR interface at the SPs initialisation runtime model to put the SP in an aborted state.

    • Support for Logical Secure Partitions at EL3, managed by the SPMD:

      • Direct messaging request from LSPs to SPs at the virtual FF-A instance.

      • Discovery of LSPs via FFA_PARTITION_INFO_GET(_REGS) interfaces.

    • Support flag to bypass multiple borrower checks as part of FFA_MEM_RETRIEVE_REQ handling.

    • Memory region nodes support addresses relative to partition’s load address.

  • Hardware architecture support:

    • Fix to SMCCC use on Hafnium, to support use of extended register set as per SMCCCv1.2 for FF-A v1.2 and above.

    • GICv3: Enable platforms to leverage Shared Peripheral Interrupts extended ranges.

    • New paravirtualized interfaces to reconfigure a physical interrupt at runtime: target CPU, disabling/enabling the secure interrupt, and changing interrupt’s security state.

    • Leverage support of secure and non-secure set of page tables for SMMUv3 streams.

    • Platform description of secure and non-secure memory is mandatory in the SPMC manifest.

    • Use security state information in the S2 page tables to invalidate SP’s TLB.

  • Tests, scripts and testing framework:

    • Test framework improved to add tests into the SP’s intialisation, via means of a helper macro.

    • Removed duplicated set of tests that were used to enable support of EL0 partitions.

    • Hypervisor build refactored to track the state of memory sharing operations.

    • Few memory sharing related tests to run on EL3 SPMC, and serve as an indicator about feature parity.

    • Added ability to perform test coverage analysis, via Hafnium’s testing scripts.

    • Increased test coverage of memory sharing functionality.

  • Bug fixes:

    • Various fixes to memory sharing functionality:

      • Clear memory operations retrieve security state from S2 translation attributes.

      • Validation to page count field in the composite memory descriptor.

      • No overlapping of memory constituents.

      • Restrict SP from doing lend/share/donate targeting a normal world borrower.

      • Processing of instruction permissions specified in the lend/share/donate and by the borrower in the memory retrieve operation.

      • Use the NS bit in the FFA_MEM_RETRIEVE_RESP from SPMC to SP.

    • Force uniqueness of boot order field in the partition’s manifest.

    • Added FFA_RUN interface restriction towards vCPU cores migration.

    • Refactor use of locked vCPU structures in few identified scenarios, that were prone to creating deadlocks.

    • Fixed the version compatibility rules in handling of the FFA_VERSION interface.

  • Misc:

    • Migration of Hafnium documentation as the reference Secure Partition Manager into its own pages, leveraging the sphinx documentation framework.

    • Free resources allocated to SP if it gets to an aborted state, including disabling any physical interrupts that might trigger.

    • Deprecation of legacy hypervisor calls HF_MAILBOX_*_GET.

    • Simplified code path in the handling of secure interrupts.

    • Added build option to specify build target, which allows for faster builds, e.g. make PLATFORM=secure_aem_v8a_fvp_vhe.

5.2. v2.9

5.2.1. Highlights

  • FF-A v1.2 (early adoption)

    • Implemented FFA_PARTITION_INFO_GET_REGS ABI permitting discovery of secure partitions by the use of general purpose registers instead of RX/TX buffers.

    • FFA_CONSOLE_LOG ABI support is improved from earlier release. It permits handling multiple characters passed through general purpose registers. The intent is to deprecate the legacy HF_DEBUG_LOG hypercall in a next release.

    • Introduced FFA_EL3_INTR_HANDLE ABI permitting the delegation of Group0 physical secure interrupt handling to EL3. A G0 interrupt triggered while an SP is running traps to S-EL2 and is routed to the SPMD by the use of this ABI. Conversely, a G0 interrupt triggered while the normal world runs traps to EL3.

  • FF-A v1.1 interrupt handling

    • Added support for secure interrupt signalling to S-EL0 partitions.

    • Increased the maximum number of virtual interrupts supported by an SP to a platform defined value (default 1024). This lifts a limitation in which SPs were allowed to declare only the first 64 physical interrupt IDs.

    • Added the impdef ‘other-s-interrupts-action’ field to SP manifests specifying the action to be taken (queued or signaled) in response to a secure interrupt targetted to an SP that is not the currently running SP.

    • For S-EL1 SP vCPUs, enable the notification pending and managed exit virtual interrupts if requested in the manifest. For S-EL0 SP vCPUs, enable virtual interrupts IDs matching the secure physical interrupt IDs declared in device regions.

    • Allow a physical interrupt declared in a SP manifest device region to be routed to any PE specified by its MPIDR. Introduce the ‘interrupts-target’ manifest field for this purpose.

  • FF-A v1.1 memory sharing

    • Implemented changes to memory sharing structures to support FF-A backwards compatibility updates in the specification. The SPMC implementation caters for the case of existing FF-A v1.0 endpoints on top of the FF-A v1.1 SPMC. The latter performs the necessary conversions in the memory sharing structures.

    • Implemented capability to share/lend/donate memory to multiple borrowers including VMs or SPs.

    • Fragmented memory sharing is supported between normal world and secure world endpoints.

  • FF-A v1.1 power management

    • Added the impdef ‘power-management-messages’ field to SP manifests specifying the type of power management events relayed to the SPMC.

    • Removed the limitation in which the first SP must be a MP SP. The configuration where all deployed SPs are S-EL0 SPs is now supported.

  • FF-A v1.1 Indirect messaging

    • Updated mailbox internal state structures to align with RX/TX buffer synchronization rules (buffer state and ownership transfer).

  • Misc and bug fixes

    • Introduced SPMC manifest memory region nodes specifying the system address ranges for secure and non-secure memory. This permits further hardening in which the SPMC needs to know the security state of a memory range. This helps boot time validation of SP manifests, and run-time checks in the memory sharing protocol.

    • SP manifest memory regions validation is hardened such that one SP cannot declare a memory region overlapping another SP’s memory region.

    • Drop dynamic allocation of memory region base address. The option for declaring a memory region without its base address (and let the SPMC choose it) is removed.

    • Fixed handling of FEAT_LPA/FEAT_LPA2.

    • SMMUv3: fix SIDSIZE field usage.

    • GIC: fixed interrupt type configuration (edge/level).

  • CI and test infrastructure

    • Migration to LLVM/clang 15.0.6

    • Removal of non-VHE configurations. Keep only configurations assuming Armv8.1 Virtualization Host Extensions is implemented. This implies HCR_EL2.E2H is always set. This change is transparent for the end user as configurations supported with VHE enabled are a superset of legacy non-VHE configurations.

    • EL3 SPMC: added test configurations to permit testing TF-A’s EL3 SPMC by the use of Hafnium’s CI test and infrastructure. The goal is to improve the test coverage for this alternative SPMC configuration and maintain a feature set parity with the S-EL2 SPMC.

    • Added debug capabilities to hftest script.

5.2.2. Known limitations:

  • Power management support limits to cpu on and cpu off events. Only S-EL1 partitions can opt in for power management events. A power management event is forwarded from the SPMD to the SPMC and isn’t forwarded to a SP.

5.3. v2.8

5.3.1. Highlights

  • FF-A v1.1 partition runtime model and CPU cycle allocation modes

    • Implemented partition runtime models for secure partitions entered at initialization, processing a secure interrupt or as a result of allocation of CPU cycles by FFA_RUN and FFA_MSG_SEND_DIRECT_REQ ABIs invocations.

    • Added state machine checks related to above, in which a partition has a set of allowed transitions to enter and exit a partition runtime model.

    • Implemented CPU cycle allocation modes and winding/unwinding of call chains.

    • Refactored managed exit field in manifests to use one of the possible “Action for a non-secure interrupt” defined by the specification.

    • Added support for preferred managed exit signal (among vIRQ or vFIQ).

    • Support for precedence of the NS interrupt action in unwinding a normal world scheduled call chain.

  • FF-A v1.1 memory sharing

    • Preparation changes for multiple borrowers and fragmented memory sharing support.

    • Fixed memory attributes checks as they are passed to memory sharing primitives (FFA_MEM_SHARE/LEND/DONATE and FFA_MEM_RETRIEVE_REQ).

    • Memory sharing support for S-EL0 partitions.

  • FF-A v1.1 notifications

    • Added framework notifications support. The supported use case is for indirect messaging to notify a partition about a message pending in its RX buffer (or ‘RX buffer full’ framework notification).

    • Added support for notification pending interrupt injection on a RX buffer full event.

  • FF-A v1.1 Indirect messaging

    • Added support for VM-VM, VM-SP, SP-SP indirect messaging scenarios.

    • Added partition message header structures.

    • Implemented FFA_MSG_SEND2 and FFA_RX_ACQUIRE ABIs.

    • Refactored VM internal state tracking in the SPMC to support forwarding of RX/TX buffer mapping/unmapping, notifications creation/destruction, RX buffer acquire/release.

    • Refactored VM mailbox states to support the RX buffer full event.

  • FF-A console log ABI

    • Added the FFA_CONSOLE_LOG ABI as a simple and standardized means to print characters without depending on an MMIO device mapped into the VM. This allows a VM to print debug or information strings through an hypervisor call service using general-purpose registers rather than a shared buffer. Multiple VMs can use the ABI concurrently as the SPMC buffers data per VM and serializes output to the physical serial device.

  • FF-A v1.1 Setup & Discovery

    • Updated the PARTITION_INFO_GET ABI to return the partition UUID in the partition information descriptors. Additionaly the partition information descriptor size is returned as part of the response.

    • Added FFA_MEM_FRAG_RX/TX as supported interface in FFA_FEATURE response.

  • Image footprint optimization

    • The following updates were made with the general idea of reducing the flash and RAM footprints. They are also means to adjust the memory utilization based on the target market segment.

      • Added platform defines to state the per-VM maximum number of memory and device regions, interrupts and SMMU streams per device.

      • Dynamically allocate per vCPU notifications.

      • Allocate vCPU structures from heap.

      • Manifest data allocation from page pool.

      • Fixed core stacks section with noload attribute.

  • GIC

    • Added support for GICv3.1 extended SPI / PPI INTID ranges.

    • Add build options to extend the number of supported virtual interrupt IDs.

  • SVE

    • Detect the platform supported SVE vector length or set the limit for the lower ELs.

    • Increased the SVE NS context to support the maximum vector length permitted by the architecture.

    • Above changes lift the limit about a fixed sized SVE vector length (of 512 bits) used in earlier releases.

  • Misc

    • Partition manifest parsing:

      • Added checks forbidding SPs to declare overlapping memory regions and conflicting device interrupt ID resources.

      • Add ability to specify the security state of a memory region for S-EL0 partitions.

    • Fixed system register trap exception injection.

    • Removed hypervisor tables defragmentation.

    • Add ability to define a log level per platform.

    • Disable alignment check for EL0 partitions (when VHE is enabled).

5.3.2. Known limitations:

  • S-EL0 partitions interrupt handling is work in progress.

  • Normal world to secure world fragmented memory sharing and sharing to multiple borrowers is work in progress.

5.4. v2.7

5.4.1. Highlights

  • Boot protocol (FF-A v1.1 EAC0)

    • The SPMC primarily supports passing the SP manifest address at boot time.

    • In a secure partition package, partition manifest and image offsets are configurable.

      • Allows for larger partition manifest sizes.

  • Setup and discovery (FF-A v1.1 EAC0)

    • FFA_VERSION is forwarded from SPMD to SPMC. SPMC records the version of a normal world endpoint.

    • Added UUID to partition info descriptors.

    • Introduced count flag to FFA_PARTITION_INFO_GET.

  • Interrupt handling (FF-A v1.1 Beta0)

    • Physical GIC registers trapped when accessed from secure partitions.

    • Priority mask register saved/restored on world switches.

    • Interrupts masked before resuming a pre-empted vCPU.

    • Implemented implicit secure interrupt completion signal.

    • Allow unused GICR frame for non-existent PEs.

  • Notifications (FF-A v1.1 EAC0)

    • Implemented notification pending interrupt and additional test coverage.

  • MTE stack tagging

    • Implemented FEAT_MTE2 stack tagging support at S-EL2.

    • Core stacks marked as normal tagged memory. A synchronous abort triggers on a load/store tag check failure.

    • This permits detection of wrong operations affecting buffers allocated from the stack.

  • FF-A v1.0 compliance

    • Check composite memory region offset is defined in FF-A memory sharing.

    • Check sender and receiver memory attributes in a FF-A memory sharing operation match the attributes expected in the Hafnium implementation.

    • Fix clear memory bit use in FF-A memory sharing from NWd to SWd.

    • Prevent FF-A memory sharing from a SP to a NS endpoint.

    • Reject a FF-A memory retrieve operation with the ‘Address Range Alignment Hint’ bit set (not supported by the implementation).

    • Refine usage of FF-A memory sharing ‘clear memory flag’.

  • Misc

    • Improved extended memory address ranges support:

      • 52 bits PA (FEAT_LPA/FEAT_LPA2) architecture extension detected results in limiting the EL2 Stage-1 physical address range to 48 bits.

      • In the FF-A memory sharing operations, harden address width checks on buffer mapping.

    • Improved MP SP and S-EL0 partitions support

      • The physical core index is passed to a SP vCPU0 on booting.

      • Added MP SP and S-EL0 partitions boot test coverage.

    • Emulate SMCCC VERSION to the primary VM.

    • Memory config registers (non-secure and secure virtualization control and translation table base) moved to the vCPU context.

    • EL2 stage 1 mapping extended to 1TB to support systems with physical address space larger than 512GB.

    • FFA_RUN ABI hardened to check the vCPU index matches the PE index onto which a vCPU is requested to run.

    • Fixed missing ISB after CPTR_EL2 update upon PE initialization.

    • Fixed stage 2 default shareability to inner shareable (from non-shareable) to better support vCPU migration.

    • Fixed manifest structure allocation from BSS rather than stack at initialization.

    • Fixed an issue with FF-A memory reclaim executed after memory donate resulting in a returned error code.

  • Build and test environment

    • Add the ability to use an out-of-tree toolchain.

      • Primary intent is to permit building Hafnium on Aarch64 hosts.

      • CI runs using the toolchain versioned in prebuilts submodule. A developer can still use this version as well.

    • Introduce an assert macro enabled by a build option on the command line. Assertions are checked by default. Production builds can optionally disable assertions.

    • Added manifest options to permit loading VMs using an FF-A manifest.

  • CI

    • Added job running the Hypervisor + SPMC configuration on patch submissions.

    • FVP

      • Enable secure memory option.

      • Remove restriction on speculative execution options.

      • Updated to use model version 11.17 build 21.

    • Updated linux submodule to v5.10.

    • VHE EL0 partitions tests automated through jenkins.

5.4.2. Known limitations:

  • FF-A v1.1 EAC0 implementation is partial mainly on interrupt handling and memory sharing.

  • Hafnium limits physical interrupt IDs to 64. The legacy virtual interrupt controller driver limits to 64. The recent addition of physical interrupt handling in the SPMC through the GIC assumes a 1:1 mapping of a physical interrupt ID to a virtual interrupt ID.

  • Secure timer virtualization is not supported.

  • The security state of memory or device region cannot be specified in a SP manifest.

5.5. v2.6

5.5.1. Highlights

  • FF-A Setup and discovery

    • FF-A build time version updated to v1.1.

    • Managed exit and notifications feature support enabled in SP manifests.

    • Updated FFA_FEATURES to permit discovery of managed exit, schedule receiver, and notification pending interrupt IDs.

    • FFA_PARTITION_INFO_GET updated to permit managed exit and notification support discovery.

    • FFA_SPM_ID_GET added to permit discovering the SPMC endpoint ID (or the SPMD ID at the secure physical FF-A instance).

    • FFA_RXTX_UNMAP implementation added.

  • FF-A v1.1 notifications

    • Added ABIs permitting VM (or OS kernel) to SP, and SP to SP asynchronous signaling.

    • Added generation of scheduler receiver (NS physical) and notification pending (secure virtual) interrupts.

    • The schedule receiver interrupt is donated from the secure world SGI interrupt ID range.

  • FF-A v1.1 interrupt handling

    • Added a GIC driver at S-EL2 permitting to trap and handle non-secure and secure interrupts while the secure world runs.

    • Added forwarding and handling of a secure interrupt while the normal world runs.

    • Added secure interrupt forwarding to the secure partition that had the interrupt registered in its partition manifest.

    • The interrupt deactivation happens through the Hafnium para-virtualized interrupt controller interface.

    • vCPU states, run time models and SP scheduling model are revisited as per FF-A v1.1 Beta0 specification (see ‘Known limitations’ section below).

  • S-EL0 partitions support

    • Added support for VHE architecture extension in the secure world (through a build option).

    • A partition bootstraps as an S-EL0 partition based on the exception-level field in the FF-A manifest.

    • It permits the implementation of applications on top of Hafnium without relying on an operating system at S-EL1.

    • It leverages the EL2&0 Stage-1 translation regime. Apps use FF-A ABIs through the SVC conduit.

    • Added FF-A v1.1 FFA_MEM_PERM_GET/SET ABIs permitting run-time update of memory region permissions.

    • It supersedes the existing S-EL1 shim architecture (without removing its support).

    • S-EL1 SP, S-EL0 SP or former S-EL0 SP+shim can all co-exist in the same system.

  • SVE

    • Support for saving/restoring the SVE live state such that S-EL2/Hafnium preserves the normal world state on world switches.

    • Secure partitions are permitted to use FP/SIMD while normal world uses SVE/SIMD/FP on the same core.

    • The SVE NS live state comprises FPCR/FPSR/FFR/p[16]/Z[32] registers.

  • LLVM/Clang 12

    • The toolchain stored in prebuilts submodule is updated to LLVM 12.0.5.

    • Build/static analyzer fixes done in the top and third party projects.

    • Linux sources (used by the test infrastructure) are updated to 5.4.148. The linux test kernel module build is updated to only depend on LLVM toolchain.

  • Hafnium CI improvements

    • Added two configurations permitting Hafnium testing in the secure world.

    • First configuration launches both the Hypervisor in the normal world and the SPMC in the secure world. This permits thorough FF-A ABI testing among normal and secure world endpoints.

    • The second configuration launches the SPMC alone for component testing or SP to SP ABI testing.

    • Hafnium CI Qemu version updated to v6.0.0 (implements VHE and FEAT_SEL2 extensions).

  • FF-A compliance fixes

    • Added checks for valid memory permissions values in manifest memory and device regions declarations.

    • FFA_FEATURES fixed to state indirect messages are not supported by the SPMC.

    • Limit an SP to emit a direct request to another SP only.

    • Memory sharing: fixed input validation and return values.

    • FFA_RXTX_MAP fixed returned error codes.

    • FFA_MSG_WAIT input parameters check hardened.

5.5.2. Known limitations:

  • S-EL0 partitions/VHE: the feature is in an experimental stage and not all use cases have been implemented or tested. Normal world to SP and SP to SP memory sharing is not tested. Interrupt handling is not tested.

  • The current implementation does not support handling a secure interrupt that is triggered while currently handling a secure interrupt. This restricts to scenarios described in Table 8.13 and Table 8.14 of the FF-A v1.1 Beta0 specification. Priority Mask Register is not saved/restored during context switching while handling secure interrupt.

  • Hafnium CI: scenarios involving the Hypervisor are left as test harness purposes only, not meant for production use cases.

5.6. v2.5

5.6.1. Highlights

  • BTI/Pointer authentication support

    • Add branch protection build option for FEAT_PAuth and FEAT_BTI to the clang command line. This only affects the S-EL2 image.

    • Enable pointer authentication by supplying a platform defined pseudo random key.

    • Enable BTI by setting the guarded page bit in MMU descriptors for executable pages.

  • SMMUv3.2 S-EL2 support

    • Add support for SMMUv3 driver to perform stage 2 translation, protection and isolation of upstream peripheral device’s DMA transactions.

  • FF-A v1.0 Non-secure interrupt handling

    • Trap physical interrupts to S-EL2 when running a SP.

    • Handle non secure interrupts that occur while an SP is executing, performing managed exit if supported.

    • Add basic support for the GICv3 interrupt controller for the AArch64 platform.

  • FF-A power management support at boot time

    • Provide platform-independent power management implementations for the Hypervisor and SPMC.

    • Implement the FFA_SECONDARY_EP_REGISTER interface for an MP SP or SPMC to register the secondary core cold boot entry point for each of their execution contexts.

    • Introduce a generic “SPMD handler” to process the power management events that may be conveyed from SPMD to SPMC, such as core off.

  • FF-A Direct message interfaces

    • Introduce SP to SP direct messaging.

    • Fix bug in the MP SP to UP SP direct response handling.

  • FF-A Memory sharing interfaces

    • Introduce SP to SP memory sharing.

    • When a sender of a memory management operation reclaims memory, set the memory regions permissions back to it’s original configuration.

    • Require default permissions to be supplied to the function ffa_memory_permissions_to_mode, so in the case where no permissions are specified for a memory operation, the data and instruction permissions can be set to the default.

    • Encode Bit[63] of the memory region handle according to if the handle is allocated by the Hypervisor or SPMC.

  • FF-A v1.0 spec compliance

    • Return INVALID_PARAMETER error code instead of NOT_SUPPORTED for direct messaging interfaces when an invalid sender or receiver id is given.

    • Check that reserved parameter registers are 0 when invoking direct messaging ABI interfaces.

    • For SMC32 compliant direct message interfaces, only copy 32-bits parameter values.

    • Change the FF-A error codes to 32-bit to match the FF-A specification.

    • Fix consistency with maintaining the calling convention bit of the func id between the ffa_handler and the FFA_FEATURES function.

  • Remove primary VM dependencies in the SPMC

    • Treat normal world as primary VM when running in the secure world.

    • Create an SPMC boot flow.

  • Hafnium CI

    • Enable Hafnium CI to include tests for Hafnium SPMC.

    • Add basic exception handler to service VM’s.

  • SIMD support

    • Add saving/restoring of other world FP/NEON/SIMD state when entering and exiting the SPMC.

  • SPMC early boot cache fix

    • Import data cache clean and invalidation helpers from TF-A project and provide an arch module for cache operations.

    • Invalidate the SPMC image in the data cache at boot time to prevent potential access to stale cache entries left by earlier boots stages.

  • Misc and bug fixes

    • Complete vCPU state save prior to normal world exit.

    • Update S-EL2 Stage-1 page table shareability from outer to inner.

    • Add PL011 UART initialization code to set the IDRD and FBRD registers according to the UART clock and baud rate specified at build time.

    • License script checker fixes.

5.6.2. Known limitations:

  • Secure interrupts not supported.

  • FF-A indirect message interface not supported in the secure world.

  • Only supporting models of MultiProcessor SP (vCPUs pinned to physical CPUs) or UniProcessor SP (single vCPU).

  • The first secure partition booted must be a MP SP.

  • FFA_RXTX_UNMAP not implemented.

  • Use of an alternate caller provided buffer from RX/TX buffers for memory sharing operations is not implemented.

  • A memory retrieve request to SPMC does not support the caller endpoint to provide the range of IPA addresses to map the region to.

5.7. v2.4

This is the first drop to implement the TrustZone secure side S-EL2 firmware (SPM Core component) complying with FF-A v1.0. It is a companion to the broader TF-A v2.4 release. The normal world Hypervisor is maintained functional along with the Hafnium CI test suite.

5.7.1. Highlights

  • FF-A v1.0 Setup and discovery interface

    • Hypervisor implementation re-used and extended to the SPMC and SPs.

    • Added partition info get ABI and appropriate properties response depending on partition capabilities (PVM, Secondary VM or Secure Partitions).

    • FF-A device-tree manifest parsing.

    • FF-A partitions can declare memory/device regions, and RX/TX buffers that the SPMC sets up in the SP EL1&0 Stage-2 translation regime at boot time.

    • FF-A IDs normal and secure world split ranges.

    • The SPMC maps the Hypervisor (or OS kernel) RX/TX buffers as non-secure buffers in its EL2 Stage-1 translation regime on FFA_RXTX_MAP ABI invocation from the non-secure physical FF-A instance.

  • FF-A v1.0 Direct message interface

    • Added implementation for the normal world Hypervisor and test cases.

    • Implementation extended to the SPMC and SPs.

    • Direct message requests emitted from the PVM to a Secondary VM or a Secure Partition (or OS Kernel to a Secure Partition). Direct message responses emitted from Secondary VMs and Secure Partitions to the PVM.

    • The secure world represents the “other world” (normal world Hypervisor or OS kernel) vCPUs in an abstract “Hypervisor VM”.

  • FF-A v1.0 memory sharing

    • Hypervisor implementation re-used and extended to the SPMC and SPs.

    • A NS buffer can be shared/lent/donated by a VM to a SP (or OS Kernel to a SP).

    • The secure world configures Stage-1 NS IPA output to access the NS PA space.

    • The secure world represents the “other world” (normal world Hypervisor or OS kernel) memory pages in an abstract “Hypervisor VM” and tracks memory sharing permissions from incoming normal world requests.

  • Secure world enablement

    • Secure Partitions booted in sequence on their primary execution context, according to the boot order field in their partition manifest. This happens during the secure boot process before the normal world actually runs.

    • The SPMC implements the logic to receive FF-A messages through the EL3 SPMD, process them, and either return to the SPMD (and normal world) or resume a Secure Partition.

    • Extract NS bit from HPFAR_EL2 on Stage-2 page fault.

    • Prevent setup of LOR regions in SWd.

    • Avoid direct PSCI calls down to EL3.

  • Platforms

    • Added Arm FVP secure Hafnium build support.

    • Added Arm TC0 “Total Compute” secure Hafnium build support.

  • Other improvements

    • Re-hosting to trustedfirmware.org

    • busy_secondary timer increased to improve CI stability.

    • Removed legacy Hypervisor calls.

    • Fix CPTR_EL2 TTA bit position.

    • Report FAR_EL2 on injecting EL1 exception.

5.7.2. Known limitations:

  • Not all fields of the FF-A manifest are actually processed by the Hafnium device-tree parser.

  • SP to SP communication not supported.

  • SP to SP memory sharing not supported.

  • S-EL1 and SIMD contexts shall be saved/restored by EL3.

  • Multi-endpoint memory sharing not supported.

  • Interrupt management limited to trapping physical interrupts to the first S-EL1 SP. Physical interrupt trapping at S-EL2 planned as next release improvement.

  • Validation mostly performed using first SP Execution Context (vCPU0). More comprehensive multicore enablement planned as next release improvement.