From: Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com>
To: Alexandre Courbot <acourbot@nvidia.com>,
Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org>,
David Airlie <airlied@gmail.com>, Simona Vetter <simona@ffwll.ch>,
Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankhorst@linux.intel.com>,
Maxime Ripard <mripard@kernel.org>,
Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>,
Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: nouveau@lists.freedesktop.org, dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org,
rust-for-linux@vger.kernel.org,
Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@nvidia.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 4/7] Documentation: gpu: nova-core: Document vbios layout
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2025 07:20:04 +0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <aGXMtB7sN1FJOXAL@archie.me> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20250702-nova-docs-v3-4-f362260813e2@nvidia.com>
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On Wed, Jul 02, 2025 at 08:00:41PM +0900, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> diff --git a/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/vbios.rst b/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/vbios.rst
> new file mode 100644
> index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..55d7dd4a6658c2a20cc5617f96b278bc4ec2ba17
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/vbios.rst
> @@ -0,0 +1,180 @@
> +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0+ OR MIT)
> +
> +==========
> +VBIOS
> +==========
> +This document describes the layout of the VBIOS image which is a series of concatenated
> +images in the ROM of the GPU. The VBIOS is mirrored onto the BAR 0 space and is read
> +by both Boot ROM firmware (also known as IFR or init-from-rom firmware) on the GPU to
> +boot strap various microcontrollers (PMU, SEC, GSP) with critical initialization before
bootstrap
> +the driver loads, as well as by the nova-core driver in the kernel to boot the GSP.
> +
> +The format of the images in the ROM follow the "BIOS Specification" part of the
> +PCI specification, with Nvidia-specific extensions. The ROM images of type FwSec
> +are the ones that contain Falcon ucode and what we are mainly looking for.
> +
> +As an example, the following are the different image types that can be found in the
> +VBIOS of an Ampere GA102 GPU which is supported by the nova-core driver.
> +
> +- PciAt Image (Type 0x00) - This is the standard PCI BIOS image, whose name
> + likely comes from the "IBM PC/AT" architecture.
> +
> +- EFI Image (Type 0x03) - This is the EFI BIOS image. It contains the UEFI GOP
> + driver that is used to display UEFI graphics output.
> +
> +- First FwSec Image (Type 0xE0) - The first FwSec image (Secure Firmware)
> +
> +- Second FwSec Image (Type 0xE0) - The second FwSec image (Secure Firmware)
> + contains various different microcodes (also known as an applications) that do
various microcodes?
> + a range of different functions. The FWSEC ucode is run in heavy-secure mode and
> + typically runs directly on the GSP (it could be running on a different designated
> + processor in future generations but as of Ampere, it is the GSP). This firmware
> + then loads other firmware ucodes onto the PMU and SEC2 microcontrollers for gfw
> + initialization after GPU reset and before the driver loads (see devinit.rst).
> + The DEVINIT ucode is itself another ucode that is stored in this ROM partition.
> +
> +Once located, the Falcon ucodes have "Application Interfaces" in their data
> +memory (DMEM). For FWSEC, the application interface we use for FWSEC is the
> +"DMEM mapper" interface which is configured to run the "FRTS" command. This
> +command carves out the WPR2 (Write-Protected Region) in VRAM. It then places
> +important power-management data, called 'FRTS', into this region. The WPR2
> +region is only accessible to heavy-secure ucode.
> +
> +.. note::
> + It is not clear why FwSec has 2 different partitions in the ROM, but they both
> + are of type 0xE0 and can be identified as such. This could be subject to change
> + in future generations.
> +
> +VBIOS ROM Layout
> +----------------
> +The VBIOS layout is roughly a series of concatenated images as follows:
> +(For more explanations of acronyms, see the detailed descriptions in vbios.rs).
Looks OK, but...
> +
> +.. note::
> + This diagram is created based on an GA-102 Ampere GPU as an example and could
> + vary for future or other GPUs.
> +
> +Here is a block diagram of the VBIOS layout::
Above sentence (but not the note directive) is redundant, though.
> +
> + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> + | VBIOS (Starting at ROM_OFFSET: 0x300000) |
> + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ |
> + | | PciAt Image (Type 0x00) | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | ROM Header | | |
> + | | | (Signature 0xAA55)| | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | rom header's pci_data_struct_offset | |
> + | | | points to the PCIR structure | |
> + | | V | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | PCIR Structure | | |
> + | | | (Signature "PCIR")| | |
> + | | | last_image: 0x80 | | |
> + | | | image_len: size | | |
> + | | | in 512-byte units | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | | |
> + | | | NPDE immediately follows PCIR | |
> + | | V | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | NPDE Structure | | |
> + | | | (Signature "NPDE")| | |
> + | | | last_image: 0x00 | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | BIT Header | (Signature scanning | |
> + | | | (Signature "BIT") | provides the location | |
> + | | +-------------------+ of the BIT table) | |
> + | | | header is | |
> + | | | followed by a table of tokens | |
> + | | V one of which is for falcon data. | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | BIT Tokens | | |
> + | | | ______________ | | |
> + | | | | Falcon Data | | | |
> + | | | | Token (0x70)|---+------------>------------+--+ |
> + | | | +-------------+ | falcon_data_ptr() | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | V |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | (no gap between images) | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | | EFI Image (Type 0x03) | | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | | Contains the UEFI GOP driver (Graphics Output)| | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | ROM Header | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | PCIR Structure | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | NPDE Structure | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | Image data | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | (no gap between images) | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | | First FwSec Image (Type 0xE0) | | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | ROM Header | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | PCIR Structure | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | NPDE Structure | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | Image data | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | (no gap between images) | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | | Second FwSec Image (Type 0xE0) | | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | ROM Header | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | PCIR Structure | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | NPDE Structure | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | | |
> + | | | PMU Lookup Table | <- falcon_data_offset <----+ |
> + | | | +-------------+ | pmu_lookup_table | |
> + | | | | Entry 0x85 | | | |
> + | | | | FWSEC_PROD | | | |
> + | | | +-------------+ | | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | | |
> + | | | points to | |
> + | | V | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | FalconUCodeDescV3 | <- falcon_ucode_offset | |
> + | | | (FWSEC Firmware) | fwsec_header() | |
> + | | +-------------------+ | |
> + | | | immediately followed by... | |
> + | | V | |
> + | | +----------------------------+ | |
> + | | | Signatures + FWSEC Ucode | | |
> + | | | fwsec_sigs(), fwsec_ucode()| | |
> + | | +----------------------------+ | |
> + | +-----------------------------------------------+ |
> + | |
> + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
> +
> +Falcon data Lookup
> +------------------
> +A key part of the VBIOS extraction code (vbios.rs) is to find the location of the
> +Falcon data in the VBIOS which contains the PMU lookup table. This lookup table is
> +used to find the required Falcon ucode based on an application ID.
> +
> +The location of the PMU lookup table is found by scanning the BIT (`BIOS Information Table`_)
> +tokens for a token with the id `BIT_TOKEN_ID_FALCON_DATA` (0x70) which indicates the
> +offset of the same from the start of the VBIOS image. Unfortunately, the offset
> +does not account for the EFI image located between the PciAt and FwSec images.
> +The `vbios.rs` code compensates for this with appropriate arithmetic.
> +
> +.. _`BIOS Information Table`: https://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/BIOS-Information-Table/1/BIOS-Information-Table.html
The rest looks good.
Thanks.
--
An old man doll... just what I always wanted! - Clara
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2025-07-03 0:20 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-07-02 11:00 [PATCH v3 0/7] Documentation for nova-core Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-02 11:00 ` [PATCH v3 1/7] gpu: nova-core: Add code comments related to devinit Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-06 13:42 ` Miguel Ojeda
2025-07-07 12:09 ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-02 11:00 ` [PATCH v3 2/7] gpu: nova-core: Clarify sysmembar operations Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-06 13:46 ` Miguel Ojeda
2025-07-10 19:06 ` Miguel Ojeda
2025-07-02 11:00 ` [PATCH v3 3/7] gpu: nova-core: Clarify falcon code Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-06 13:48 ` Miguel Ojeda
2025-07-02 11:00 ` [PATCH v3 4/7] Documentation: gpu: nova-core: Document vbios layout Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-03 0:20 ` Bagas Sanjaya [this message]
2025-07-03 15:49 ` Joel Fernandes
2025-07-02 11:00 ` [PATCH v3 5/7] Documentation: gpu: nova-core: Document devinit process Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-03 0:22 ` Bagas Sanjaya
2025-07-02 11:00 ` [PATCH v3 6/7] Documentation: gpu: nova-core: Document fwsec operation and layout Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-03 0:25 ` Bagas Sanjaya
2025-07-03 15:50 ` Joel Fernandes
2025-07-02 11:00 ` [PATCH v3 7/7] Documentation: gpu: nova-core: Document basics of the Falcon Alexandre Courbot
2025-07-03 0:29 ` Bagas Sanjaya
2025-07-02 11:06 ` [PATCH v3 0/7] Documentation for nova-core Joel Fernandes
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