handler route. Furthermore, the transactional 2nd register state will be
inaccessible. GDB can currently be used on programs using TM, but not sensibly
in parts within transactions.
+
+POWER9
+======
+
+TM on POWER9 has issues with storing the complete register state. This
+is described in this commit:
+
+ commit 4bb3c7a0208fc13ca70598efd109901a7cd45ae7
+ Author: Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>
+ Date: Wed Mar 21 21:32:01 2018 +1100
+ KVM: PPC: Book3S HV: Work around transactional memory bugs in POWER9
+
+To account for this different POWER9 chips have TM enabled in
+different ways.
+
+On POWER9N DD2.01 and below, TM is disabled. ie
+HWCAP2[PPC_FEATURE2_HTM] is not set.
+
+On POWER9N DD2.1 TM is configured by firmware to always abort a
+transaction when tm suspend occurs. So tsuspend will cause a
+transaction to be aborted and rolled back. Kernel exceptions will also
+cause the transaction to be aborted and rolled back and the exception
+will not occur. If userspace constructs a sigcontext that enables TM
+suspend, the sigcontext will be rejected by the kernel. This mode is
+advertised to users with HWCAP2[PPC_FEATURE2_HTM_NO_SUSPEND] set.
+HWCAP2[PPC_FEATURE2_HTM] is not set in this mode.
+
+On POWER9N DD2.2 and above, KVM and POWERVM emulate TM for guests (as
+described in commit 4bb3c7a0208f), hence TM is enabled for guests
+ie. HWCAP2[PPC_FEATURE2_HTM] is set for guest userspace. Guests that
+makes heavy use of TM suspend (tsuspend or kernel suspend) will result
+in traps into the hypervisor and hence will suffer a performance
+degradation. Host userspace has TM disabled
+ie. HWCAP2[PPC_FEATURE2_HTM] is not set. (although we make enable it
+at some point in the future if we bring the emulation into host
+userspace context switching).
+
+POWER9C DD1.2 and above are only available with POWERVM and hence
+Linux only runs as a guest. On these systems TM is emulated like on
+POWER9N DD2.2.
+
+Guest migration from POWER8 to POWER9 will work with POWER9N DD2.2 and
+POWER9C DD1.2. Since earlier POWER9 processors don't support TM
+emulation, migration from POWER8 to POWER9 is not supported there.