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    SubjectRe: [PATCH 0/3] arm64: cpuinfo: make /proc/cpuinfo more human-readable
    Hi Al,

    On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 04:23:21PM -0600, Al Stone wrote:
    > As ARMv8 servers get deployed, I keep getting the same set of questions
    > from end-users of those systems: what do all the hex numbers mean in
    > /proc/cpuinfo and could you make them so I don't have to carry a cheat
    > sheet with me all the time?

    I appreciate that /proc/cpuinfo can be opaque to end users, but I do not
    believe that this is the right solution to that problem.

    There are a number of issues stemming from the face that /proc/cpuinfo
    is ill-defined and overused for a number of cases. Changes to it almost
    certainly violate brittle de-facto ABI details people are relying on,
    and there's a very long tail on fallout resulting from this. In
    addition, many niceties come at an excessive maintenance cost, and are
    simply unreliable as an ABI.

    So, as with all other patches modifying /proc/cpuinfo, I must NAK this
    series.

    For the MPIDR and product info, I think we can expose this in a more
    structured way (e.g. under sysfs). IIUC the product info is all derived
    from DMI -- do we not expose that already?

    For the human-readable names I must NAK such patches. This is an
    extremely brittle ABI that cannot be forwards compatible, and comes with
    hilarious political problems. This should be managed in userspace alone.

    I thought tools like lscpu and lshw were intended to gather such
    information for users. What are these missing today?

    Thanks,
    Mark.

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