mip
Machine Interrupt Pending
The mie and mip CSRs are MXLEN-bit read/write registers used when the CLINT or PLIC interrupt controllers are present. Note that the CLINT refers to an interrupt controller used by some RISC-V implementations but isn’t a ratified RISC-V International standard.
The mip CSR contains information on pending interrupts, while mie is the corresponding CSR containing interrupt enable bits. Interrupt cause number i (as reported in the mcause CSR) corresponds to bit i in both mip and mie. Bits 15:0 are allocated to standard interrupt causes only, while bits 16 and above are designated for platform use.
| Interrupts designated for platform use may be designated for custom use at the platform’s discretion. |
An interrupt i will trap to M-mode (causing the privilege mode to change to M-mode) if all of the following are true:
These conditions for an interrupt trap to occur must be evaluated in a bounded amount of time from when an interrupt becomes, or ceases to be, pending in mip, and must also be evaluated immediately following the execution of an xRET instruction or an explicit write to a CSR on which these interrupt trap conditions expressly depend (including mip, mie, mstatus, and mideleg).
Interrupts to M-mode take priority over any interrupts to lower privilege modes.
Each individual bit in register mip may be writable or may be read-only. When bit i in mip is writable, a pending interrupt i can be cleared by writing 0 to this bit. If interrupt i can become pending but bit i in mip is read-only, the implementation must provide some other mechanism for clearing the pending interrupt.
A bit in mie must be writable if the corresponding interrupt can ever become pending. Bits of mie that are not writable must be read-only zero.
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The machine-level interrupt registers handle a few root interrupt sources which are assigned a fixed service priority for simplicity, while separate external interrupt controllers can implement a more complex prioritization scheme over a much larger set of interrupts that are then muxed into the machine-level interrupt sources. The non-maskable interrupt is not made visible via the mip register as its presence is implicitly known when executing the NMI trap handler. |
If supervisor mode is implemented, bits mip.SEIP and mie.SEIE are
the interrupt-pending and interrupt-enable bits for supervisor-level
external interrupts. SEIP is writable in mip, and may be written by
M-mode software to indicate to S-mode that an external interrupt is
pending. Additionally, the platform-level interrupt controller may
generate supervisor-level external interrupts. Supervisor-level external
interrupts are made pending based on the logical-OR of the
software-writable SEIP bit and the signal from the external interrupt
controller. When mip is read with a CSR instruction, the value of the
SEIP bit returned in the rd destination register is the logical-OR of
the software-writable bit and the interrupt signal from the interrupt
controller, but the signal from the interrupt controller is not used to
calculate the value written to SEIP. Only the software-writable SEIP bit
participates in the read-modify-write sequence of a CSRRS or CSRRC
instruction.
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For example, if we name the software-writable SEIP bit B and the
signal from the external interrupt controller The SEIP field behavior is designed to allow a higher privilege layer to mimic external interrupts cleanly, without losing any real external interrupts. The behavior of the CSR instructions is slightly modified from regular CSR accesses as a result. |
If supervisor mode is implemented, bits mip.STIP and mie.STIE are the interrupt-pending and interrupt-enable bits for supervisor-level timer interrupts. STIP is writable in mip, and may be written by M-mode software to deliver timer interrupts to S-mode.
If supervisor mode is implemented, bits mip.SSIP and mie.SSIE are the interrupt-pending and interrupt-enable bits for supervisor-level software interrupts. SSIP is writable in mip and may also be set to 1 by a platform-specific interrupt controller.
Multiple simultaneous interrupts destined for M-mode are handled in the following decreasing priority order: MEI, MSI, MTI, SEI, SSI, STI, LCOFI.
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The machine-level interrupt fixed-priority ordering rules were developed with the following rationale. Interrupts for higher privilege modes must be serviced before interrupts for lower privilege modes to support preemption. The platform-specific machine-level interrupt sources in bits 16 and above have platform-specific priority, but are typically chosen to have the highest service priority to support very fast local vectored interrupts. External interrupts are handled before internal (timer/software) interrupts as external interrupts are usually generated by devices that might require low interrupt service times. Software interrupts are handled before internal timer interrupts, because internal timer interrupts are usually intended for time slicing, where time precision is less important, whereas software interrupts are used for inter-processor messaging. Software interrupts can be avoided when high-precision timing is required, or high-precision timer interrupts can be routed via a different interrupt path. Software interrupts are located in the lowest four bits of mip as these are often written by software, and this position allows the use of a single CSR instruction with a five-bit immediate. |
Restricted views of the mip and mie registers appear as the sip
and sie registers for supervisor level. If an interrupt is delegated
to S-mode by setting a bit in the mideleg register, it becomes visible
in the sip register and is maskable using the sie register.
Otherwise, the corresponding bits in sip and sie are read-only zero.
Attributes
Defining Extension |
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CSR Address |
0x344 |
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Length |
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Privilege Mode |
M |