[PATCH v6 8/8] vfio/pci: Add IGD documentation

Alex Williamson
2016-05-17T20:20:08Z

Document the usage modes, host primary graphics considerations, usage,
and fw_cfg ABI required for IGD assignment with vfio.

Signed-off-by: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>
---
docs/igd-assign.txt | 133 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 133 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 docs/igd-assign.txt

diff --git a/docs/igd-assign.txt b/docs/igd-assign.txt
new file mode 100644
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+Intel Graphics Device (IGD) assignment with vfio-pci
+====================================================
+
+IGD has two different modes for assignment using vfio-pci:
+
+1) Universal Pass-Through (UPT) mode:
+
+ In this mode the IGD device is added as a *secondary* (ie. non-primary)
+ graphics device in combination with an emulated primary graphics device.
+ This mode *requires* guest driver support to remove the external
+ dependencies generally associated with IGD (see below). Those guest
+ drivers only support this mode for Broadwell and newer IGD, according to
+ Intel. Additionally, this mode by default, and as officially supported
+ by Intel, does not support direct video output. The intention is to use
+ this mode either to provide hardware acceleration to the emulated graphics
+ or to use this mode in combination with guest-based remote access software,
+ for example VNC (see below for optional output support). This mode
+ theoretically has no device specific handling dependencies on vfio-pci or
+ the VM firmware.
+
+2) "Legacy" mode:
+
+ In this mode the IGD device is intended to be the primary and exclusive
+ graphics device in the VM[1], as such QEMU does not facilitate any sort
+ of remote graphics to the VM in this mode. A connected physical monitor
+ is the intended output device for IGD. This mode includes several
+ requirements and restrictions:
+
+ * IGD must be given address 02.0 on the PCI root bus in the VM
+ * The host kernel must support vfio extensions for IGD (v4.6)
+ * vfio VGA support very likely needs to be enabled in the host kernel
+ * The VM firmware must support specific fw_cfg enablers for IGD
+ * The VM machine type must support a PCI host bridge at 00.0 (standard)
+ * The VM machine type must provide or allow to be created a special
+ ISA/LPC bridge device (vfio-pci-igd-lpc-bridge) on the root bus at
+ PCI address 1f.0.
+ * The IGD device must have a VGA ROM, either provided via the romfile
+ option or loaded automatically through vfio (standard). rombar=0
+ will disable legacy mode support.
+ * Hotplug of the IGD device is not supported.
+ * The IGD device must be a SandyBridge or newer model device.
+
+For either mode, depending on the host kernel, the i915 driver in the host
+may generate faults and errors upon re-binding to an IGD device after it
+has been assigned to a VM. It's therefore generally recommended to prevent
+such driver binding unless the host driver is known to work well for this.
+There are numerous ways to do this, i915 can be blacklisted on the host,
+the driver_override option can be used to ensure that only vfio-pci can bind
+to the device on the host[2], virsh nodedev-detach can be used to bind the
+device to vfio drivers and then managed='no' set in the VM xml to prevent
+re-binding to i915, etc. Also note that IGD is also typically the primary
+graphics in the host and special options may be required beyond simply
+blacklisting i915 or using pci-stub/vfio-pci to take ownership of IGD as a
+PCI class device. Lower level drivers exist that may still claim the device.
+It may therefore be necessary to use kernel boot options video=vesafb:off or
+video=efifb:off (depending on host BIOS/UEFI) or these can be combined to
+a catch-all, video=vesafb:off,efifb:off. Error messages such as:
+
+ Failed to mmap 0000:00:02.0 BAR <>. Performance may be slow
+
+are a good indicator that such a problem exists. The host files /proc/iomem
+and /proc/ioports are often useful for identifying drivers consuming ranges
+of the device to cause such conflicts.
+
+Additionally, IGD device are known to generate small numbers of DMAR faults
+when initially assigned. It is believed that this is simply the IGD attempting
+to access the reserved GTT space after reset, which it no longer has access to
+when accessed from userspace. So long as the DMAR faults are small in number
+and most importantly, not ongoing, these are not an indication of an error.
+
+Additionally++, analog VGA output (as opposed to digital outputs like HDMI,
+DVI, or DisplayPort) may be unsupported in some use cases. In the author's
+experience, even DP to VGA adapters can be troublesome while adapters between
+digital formats work well.
+
+Usage
+=====
+The intention is for IGD assignment to be transparent for users and thus for
+management tools like libvirt. To make use of legacy mode, simply remove all
+other graphics options and use "-nographic" and either "-vga none" or
+"-nodefaults", along with adding the device using vfio-pci:
+
+ -device vfio-pci,host=00:02.0,id=hostdev0,bus=pci.0,addr=0x2
+
+For UPT mode, retain the default emulated graphics and simply add the vfio-pci
+device making use of any other bus address other than 02.0. libvirt will
+default to assigning the device a UPT compatible address while legacy mode
+users will need to manually edit the XML if using a tool like virt-manager
+where the VM device address is not expressly specified.
+
+An experimental vfio-pci option also exists to enable OpRegion, and thus
+external monitor support, for UPT mode. This can be enabled by adding
+"x-igd-opregion=on" to the vfio-pci device options for the IGD device. As
+with legacy mode, this requires the host to support features introduced in
+the v4.6 kernel. If Intel chooses to embrace this support, the option may
+be made non-experimental in the future, opening it to libvirt support.
+
+Developer ABI
+=============
+Legacy mode IGD support imposes two fw_cfg requirements on the VM firmware:
+
+1) "etc/igd-opregion"
+
+ This fw_cfg file exposes the OpRegion for the IGD device. A reserved
+ region should be created below 4GB (recommended 4KB alignment), sized
+ sufficient for the fw_cfg file size, and the content of this file copied
+ to it. The dword based address of this reserved memory region must also
+ be written to the ASLS register at offset 0xFC on the IGD device. It is
+ recommended that firmware should make use of this fw_cfg entry for any
+ PCI class VGA device with Intel vendor ID. Multiple of such devices
+ within a VM is undefined.
+
+2) "etc/igd-bdsm-size"
+
+ This fw_cfg file contains an 8-byte, little endian integer indicating
+ the size of the reserved memory region required for IGD stolen memory.
+ Firmware must allocate a reserved memory below 4GB with required 1MB
+ alignment equal to this size. Additionally the base address of this
+ reserved region must be written to the dword BDSM register in PCI config
+ space of the IGD device at offset 0x5C. As this support is related to
+ running the IGD ROM, which has other dependencies on the device appearing
+ at guest address 00:02.0, it's expected that this fw_cfg file is only
+ relevant to a single PCI class VGA device with Intel vendor ID, appearing
+ at PCI bus address 00:02.0.
+
+Footnotes
+=========
+[1] Nothing precludes adding additional emulated or assigned graphics devices
+ as non-primary, other than the combination typically not working. I only
+ intend to set user expectations, others are welcome to find working
+ combinations or fix whatever issues prevent this from working in the common
+ case.
+[2] # echo "vfio-pci" > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:00:02.0/driver_override