drm/i915 Intel GFX Driver

The drm/i915 driver supports all (with the exception of some very early models) integrated GFX chipsets with both Intel display and rendering blocks. This excludes a set of SoC platforms with an SGX rendering unit, those have basic support through the gma500 drm driver.

Core Driver Infrastructure

This section covers core driver infrastructure used by both the display and the GEM parts of the driver.

Runtime Power Management

The i915 driver supports dynamic enabling and disabling of entire hardware blocks at runtime. This is especially important on the display side where software is supposed to control many power gates manually on recent hardware, since on the GT side a lot of the power management is done by the hardware. But even there some manual control at the device level is required.

Since i915 supports a diverse set of platforms with a unified codebase and hardware engineers just love to shuffle functionality around between power domains there’s a sizeable amount of indirection required. This file provides generic functions to the driver for grabbing and releasing references for abstract power domains. It then maps those to the actual power wells present for a given platform.

bool __intel_display_power_is_enabled(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum intel_display_power_domain domain)

unlocked check for a power domain

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum intel_display_power_domain domain
power domain to check

Description

This is the unlocked version of intel_display_power_is_enabled() and should only be used from error capture and recovery code where deadlocks are possible.

Return

True when the power domain is enabled, false otherwise.

bool intel_display_power_is_enabled(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum intel_display_power_domain domain)

check for a power domain

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum intel_display_power_domain domain
power domain to check

Description

This function can be used to check the hw power domain state. It is mostly used in hardware state readout functions. Everywhere else code should rely upon explicit power domain reference counting to ensure that the hardware block is powered up before accessing it.

Callers must hold the relevant modesetting locks to ensure that concurrent threads can’t disable the power well while the caller tries to read a few registers.

Return

True when the power domain is enabled, false otherwise.

void gen9_set_dc_state(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, uint32_t state)

set target display C power state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
uint32_t state
target DC power state - DC_STATE_DISABLE - DC_STATE_EN_UPTO_DC5 - DC_STATE_EN_UPTO_DC6 - DC_STATE_EN_DC9

Description

Signal to DMC firmware/HW the target DC power state passed in state. DMC/HW can turn off individual display clocks and power rails when entering a deeper DC power state (higher in number) and turns these back when exiting that state to a shallower power state (lower in number). The HW will decide when to actually enter a given state on an on-demand basis, for instance depending on the active state of display pipes. The state of display registers backed by affected power rails are saved/restored as needed.

Based on the above enabling a deeper DC power state is asynchronous wrt. enabling it. Disabling a deeper power state is synchronous: for instance setting DC_STATE_DISABLE won’t complete until all HW resources are turned back on and register state is restored. This is guaranteed by the MMIO write to DC_STATE_EN blocking until the state is restored.

void intel_display_power_get(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum intel_display_power_domain domain)

grab a power domain reference

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum intel_display_power_domain domain
power domain to reference

Description

This function grabs a power domain reference for domain and ensures that the power domain and all its parents are powered up. Therefore users should only grab a reference to the innermost power domain they need.

Any power domain reference obtained by this function must have a symmetric call to intel_display_power_put() to release the reference again.

bool intel_display_power_get_if_enabled(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum intel_display_power_domain domain)

grab a reference for an enabled display power domain

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum intel_display_power_domain domain
power domain to reference

Description

This function grabs a power domain reference for domain and ensures that the power domain and all its parents are powered up. Therefore users should only grab a reference to the innermost power domain they need.

Any power domain reference obtained by this function must have a symmetric call to intel_display_power_put() to release the reference again.

void intel_display_power_put(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum intel_display_power_domain domain)

release a power domain reference

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum intel_display_power_domain domain
power domain to reference

Description

This function drops the power domain reference obtained by intel_display_power_get() and might power down the corresponding hardware block right away if this is the last reference.

int intel_power_domains_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initializes the power domain structures

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Initializes the power domain structures for dev_priv depending upon the supported platform.

void intel_power_domains_cleanup(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

clean up power domains resources

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Release any resources acquired by intel_power_domains_init()

void intel_power_domains_init_hw(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, bool resume)

initialize hardware power domain state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
bool resume
Called from resume code paths or not

Description

This function initializes the hardware power domain state and enables all power wells belonging to the INIT power domain. Power wells in other domains (and not in the INIT domain) are referenced or disabled by intel_modeset_readout_hw_state(). After that the reference count of each power well must match its HW enabled state, see intel_power_domains_verify_state().

It will return with power domains disabled (to be enabled later by intel_power_domains_enable()) and must be paired with intel_power_domains_fini_hw().

void intel_power_domains_fini_hw(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

deinitialize hw power domain state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

De-initializes the display power domain HW state. It also ensures that the device stays powered up so that the driver can be reloaded.

It must be called with power domains already disabled (after a call to intel_power_domains_disable()) and must be paired with intel_power_domains_init_hw().

void intel_power_domains_enable(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

enable toggling of display power wells

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Enable the ondemand enabling/disabling of the display power wells. Note that power wells not belonging to POWER_DOMAIN_INIT are allowed to be toggled only at specific points of the display modeset sequence, thus they are not affected by the intel_power_domains_enable()/disable() calls. The purpose of these function is to keep the rest of power wells enabled until the end of display HW readout (which will acquire the power references reflecting the current HW state).

void intel_power_domains_disable(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

disable toggling of display power wells

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Disable the ondemand enabling/disabling of the display power wells. See intel_power_domains_enable() for which power wells this call controls.

void intel_power_domains_suspend(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum i915_drm_suspend_mode suspend_mode)

suspend power domain state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum i915_drm_suspend_mode suspend_mode
specifies the target suspend state (idle, mem, hibernation)

Description

This function prepares the hardware power domain state before entering system suspend.

It must be called with power domains already disabled (after a call to intel_power_domains_disable()) and paired with intel_power_domains_resume().

void intel_power_domains_resume(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

resume power domain state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function resume the hardware power domain state during system resume.

It will return with power domain support disabled (to be enabled later by intel_power_domains_enable()) and must be paired with intel_power_domains_suspend().

void intel_power_domains_verify_state(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

verify the HW/SW state for all power wells

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Verify if the reference count of each power well matches its HW enabled state and the total refcount of the domains it belongs to. This must be called after modeset HW state sanitization, which is responsible for acquiring reference counts for any power wells in use and disabling the ones left on by BIOS but not required by any active output.

void intel_runtime_pm_get(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

grab a runtime pm reference

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function grabs a device-level runtime pm reference (mostly used for GEM code to ensure the GTT or GT is on) and ensures that it is powered up.

Any runtime pm reference obtained by this function must have a symmetric call to intel_runtime_pm_put() to release the reference again.

bool intel_runtime_pm_get_if_in_use(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

grab a runtime pm reference if device in use

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function grabs a device-level runtime pm reference if the device is already in use and ensures that it is powered up. It is illegal to try and access the HW should intel_runtime_pm_get_if_in_use() report failure.

Any runtime pm reference obtained by this function must have a symmetric call to intel_runtime_pm_put() to release the reference again.

Return

True if the wakeref was acquired, or False otherwise.

void intel_runtime_pm_get_noresume(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

grab a runtime pm reference

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function grabs a device-level runtime pm reference (mostly used for GEM code to ensure the GTT or GT is on).

It will _not_ power up the device but instead only check that it’s powered on. Therefore it is only valid to call this functions from contexts where the device is known to be powered up and where trying to power it up would result in hilarity and deadlocks. That pretty much means only the system suspend/resume code where this is used to grab runtime pm references for delayed setup down in work items.

Any runtime pm reference obtained by this function must have a symmetric call to intel_runtime_pm_put() to release the reference again.

void intel_runtime_pm_put(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

release a runtime pm reference

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function drops the device-level runtime pm reference obtained by intel_runtime_pm_get() and might power down the corresponding hardware block right away if this is the last reference.

void intel_runtime_pm_enable(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

enable runtime pm

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function enables runtime pm at the end of the driver load sequence.

Note that this function does currently not enable runtime pm for the subordinate display power domains. That is done by intel_power_domains_enable().

void intel_uncore_forcewake_get(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum forcewake_domains fw_domains)

grab forcewake domain references

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum forcewake_domains fw_domains
forcewake domains to get reference on

Description

This function can be used get GT’s forcewake domain references. Normal register access will handle the forcewake domains automatically. However if some sequence requires the GT to not power down a particular forcewake domains this function should be called at the beginning of the sequence. And subsequently the reference should be dropped by symmetric call to intel_unforce_forcewake_put(). Usually caller wants all the domains to be kept awake so the fw_domains would be then FORCEWAKE_ALL.

void intel_uncore_forcewake_user_get(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

claim forcewake on behalf of userspace

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function is a wrapper around intel_uncore_forcewake_get() to acquire the GT powerwell and in the process disable our debugging for the duration of userspace’s bypass.

void intel_uncore_forcewake_user_put(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

release forcewake on behalf of userspace

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function complements intel_uncore_forcewake_user_get() and releases the GT powerwell taken on behalf of the userspace bypass.

void intel_uncore_forcewake_get__locked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum forcewake_domains fw_domains)

grab forcewake domain references

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum forcewake_domains fw_domains
forcewake domains to get reference on

Description

See intel_uncore_forcewake_get(). This variant places the onus on the caller to explicitly handle the dev_priv->uncore.lock spinlock.

void intel_uncore_forcewake_put(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum forcewake_domains fw_domains)

release a forcewake domain reference

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum forcewake_domains fw_domains
forcewake domains to put references

Description

This function drops the device-level forcewakes for specified domains obtained by intel_uncore_forcewake_get().

void intel_uncore_forcewake_put__locked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum forcewake_domains fw_domains)

grab forcewake domain references

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum forcewake_domains fw_domains
forcewake domains to get reference on

Description

See intel_uncore_forcewake_put(). This variant places the onus on the caller to explicitly handle the dev_priv->uncore.lock spinlock.

int gen6_reset_engines(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned int engine_mask, unsigned int retry)

reset individual engines

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned int engine_mask
mask of intel_ring_flag() engines or ALL_ENGINES for full reset
unsigned int retry
the count of of previous attempts to reset.

Description

This function will reset the individual engines that are set in engine_mask. If you provide ALL_ENGINES as mask, full global domain reset will be issued.

Note

It is responsibility of the caller to handle the difference between asking full domain reset versus reset for all available individual engines.

Returns 0 on success, nonzero on error.

int gen11_reset_engines(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned int engine_mask)

reset individual engines

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned int engine_mask
mask of intel_ring_flag() engines or ALL_ENGINES for full reset

Description

This function will reset the individual engines that are set in engine_mask. If you provide ALL_ENGINES as mask, full global domain reset will be issued.

Note

It is responsibility of the caller to handle the difference between asking full domain reset versus reset for all available individual engines.

Returns 0 on success, nonzero on error.

int __intel_wait_for_register_fw(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, i915_reg_t reg, u32 mask, u32 value, unsigned int fast_timeout_us, unsigned int slow_timeout_ms, u32 * out_value)

wait until register matches expected state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 device
i915_reg_t reg
the register to read
u32 mask
mask to apply to register value
u32 value
expected value
unsigned int fast_timeout_us
fast timeout in microsecond for atomic/tight wait
unsigned int slow_timeout_ms
slow timeout in millisecond
u32 * out_value
optional placeholder to hold registry value

Description

This routine waits until the target register reg contains the expected value after applying the mask, i.e. it waits until

(I915_READ_FW(reg) & mask) == value

Otherwise, the wait will timeout after slow_timeout_ms milliseconds. For atomic context slow_timeout_ms must be zero and fast_timeout_us must be not larger than 20,0000 microseconds.

Note that this routine assumes the caller holds forcewake asserted, it is not suitable for very long waits. See intel_wait_for_register() if you wish to wait without holding forcewake for the duration (i.e. you expect the wait to be slow).

Returns 0 if the register matches the desired condition, or -ETIMEOUT.

int __intel_wait_for_register(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, i915_reg_t reg, u32 mask, u32 value, unsigned int fast_timeout_us, unsigned int slow_timeout_ms, u32 * out_value)

wait until register matches expected state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 device
i915_reg_t reg
the register to read
u32 mask
mask to apply to register value
u32 value
expected value
unsigned int fast_timeout_us
fast timeout in microsecond for atomic/tight wait
unsigned int slow_timeout_ms
slow timeout in millisecond
u32 * out_value
optional placeholder to hold registry value

Description

This routine waits until the target register reg contains the expected value after applying the mask, i.e. it waits until

(I915_READ(reg) & mask) == value

Otherwise, the wait will timeout after timeout_ms milliseconds.

Returns 0 if the register matches the desired condition, or -ETIMEOUT.

enum forcewake_domains intel_uncore_forcewake_for_reg(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, i915_reg_t reg, unsigned int op)

which forcewake domains are needed to access a register

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
pointer to struct drm_i915_private
i915_reg_t reg
register in question
unsigned int op
operation bitmask of FW_REG_READ and/or FW_REG_WRITE

Description

Returns a set of forcewake domains required to be taken with for example intel_uncore_forcewake_get for the specified register to be accessible in the specified mode (read, write or read/write) with raw mmio accessors.

NOTE

On Gen6 and Gen7 write forcewake domain (FORCEWAKE_RENDER) requires the callers to do FIFO management on their own or risk losing writes.

Interrupt Handling

These functions provide the basic support for enabling and disabling the interrupt handling support. There’s a lot more functionality in i915_irq.c and related files, but that will be described in separate chapters.

void intel_irq_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initializes irq support

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function initializes all the irq support including work items, timers and all the vtables. It does not setup the interrupt itself though.

void intel_runtime_pm_disable_interrupts(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

runtime interrupt disabling

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function is used to disable interrupts at runtime, both in the runtime pm and the system suspend/resume code.

void intel_runtime_pm_enable_interrupts(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

runtime interrupt enabling

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function is used to enable interrupts at runtime, both in the runtime pm and the system suspend/resume code.

Intel GVT-g Guest Support(vGPU)

Intel GVT-g is a graphics virtualization technology which shares the GPU among multiple virtual machines on a time-sharing basis. Each virtual machine is presented a virtual GPU (vGPU), which has equivalent features as the underlying physical GPU (pGPU), so i915 driver can run seamlessly in a virtual machine. This file provides vGPU specific optimizations when running in a virtual machine, to reduce the complexity of vGPU emulation and to improve the overall performance.

A primary function introduced here is so-called “address space ballooning” technique. Intel GVT-g partitions global graphics memory among multiple VMs, so each VM can directly access a portion of the memory without hypervisor’s intervention, e.g. filling textures or queuing commands. However with the partitioning an unmodified i915 driver would assume a smaller graphics memory starting from address ZERO, then requires vGPU emulation module to translate the graphics address between ‘guest view’ and ‘host view’, for all registers and command opcodes which contain a graphics memory address. To reduce the complexity, Intel GVT-g introduces “address space ballooning”, by telling the exact partitioning knowledge to each guest i915 driver, which then reserves and prevents non-allocated portions from allocation. Thus vGPU emulation module only needs to scan and validate graphics addresses without complexity of address translation.

void i915_check_vgpu(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

detect virtual GPU

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private

Description

This function is called at the initialization stage, to detect whether running on a vGPU.

void intel_vgt_deballoon(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

deballoon reserved graphics address trunks

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private data

Description

This function is called to deallocate the ballooned-out graphic memory, when driver is unloaded or when ballooning fails.

int intel_vgt_balloon(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

balloon out reserved graphics address trunks

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private data

Description

This function is called at the initialization stage, to balloon out the graphic address space allocated to other vGPUs, by marking these spaces as reserved. The ballooning related knowledge(starting address and size of the mappable/unmappable graphic memory) is described in the vgt_if structure in a reserved mmio range.

To give an example, the drawing below depicts one typical scenario after ballooning. Here the vGPU1 has 2 pieces of graphic address spaces ballooned out each for the mappable and the non-mappable part. From the vGPU1 point of view, the total size is the same as the physical one, with the start address of its graphic space being zero. Yet there are some portions ballooned out( the shadow part, which are marked as reserved by drm allocator). From the host point of view, the graphic address space is partitioned by multiple vGPUs in different VMs.

                       vGPU1 view         Host view
            0 ------> +-----------+     +-----------+
              ^       |###########|     |   vGPU3   |
              |       |###########|     +-----------+
              |       |###########|     |   vGPU2   |
              |       +-----------+     +-----------+
       mappable GM    | available | ==> |   vGPU1   |
              |       +-----------+     +-----------+
              |       |###########|     |           |
              v       |###########|     |   Host    |
              +=======+===========+     +===========+
              ^       |###########|     |   vGPU3   |
              |       |###########|     +-----------+
              |       |###########|     |   vGPU2   |
              |       +-----------+     +-----------+
     unmappable GM    | available | ==> |   vGPU1   |
              |       +-----------+     +-----------+
              |       |###########|     |           |
              |       |###########|     |   Host    |
              v       |###########|     |           |
total GM size ------> +-----------+     +-----------+

Return

zero on success, non-zero if configuration invalid or ballooning failed

Intel GVT-g Host Support(vGPU device model)

Intel GVT-g is a graphics virtualization technology which shares the GPU among multiple virtual machines on a time-sharing basis. Each virtual machine is presented a virtual GPU (vGPU), which has equivalent features as the underlying physical GPU (pGPU), so i915 driver can run seamlessly in a virtual machine.

To virtualize GPU resources GVT-g driver depends on hypervisor technology e.g KVM/VFIO/mdev, Xen, etc. to provide resource access trapping capability and be virtualized within GVT-g device module. More architectural design doc is available on https://01.org/group/2230/documentation-list.

void intel_gvt_sanitize_options(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

sanitize GVT related options

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
drm i915 private data

Description

This function is called at the i915 options sanitize stage.

int intel_gvt_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initialize GVT components

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
drm i915 private data

Description

This function is called at the initialization stage to create a GVT device.

Return

Zero on success, negative error code if failed.

void intel_gvt_cleanup(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

cleanup GVT components when i915 driver is unloading

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
drm i915 private *

Description

This function is called at the i915 driver unloading stage, to shutdown GVT components and release the related resources.

Workarounds

This file is intended as a central place to implement most [1] of the required workarounds for hardware to work as originally intended. They fall in five basic categories depending on how/when they are applied:

  • Workarounds that touch registers that are saved/restored to/from the HW context image. The list is emitted (via Load Register Immediate commands) everytime a new context is created.
  • GT workarounds. The list of these WAs is applied whenever these registers revert to default values (on GPU reset, suspend/resume [2], etc..).
  • Display workarounds. The list is applied during display clock-gating initialization.
  • Workarounds that whitelist a privileged register, so that UMDs can manage them directly. This is just a special case of a MMMIO workaround (as we write the list of these to/be-whitelisted registers to some special HW registers).
  • Workaround batchbuffers, that get executed automatically by the hardware on every HW context restore.
[1]Please notice that there are other WAs that, due to their nature, cannot be applied from a central place. Those are peppered around the rest of the code, as needed.
[2]Technically, some registers are powercontext saved & restored, so they survive a suspend/resume. In practice, writing them again is not too costly and simplifies things. We can revisit this in the future.

Layout

Keep things in this file ordered by WA type, as per the above (context, GT, display, register whitelist, batchbuffer). Then, inside each type, keep the following order:

  • Infrastructure functions and macros
  • WAs per platform in standard gen/chrono order
  • Public functions to init or apply the given workaround type.

Display Hardware Handling

This section covers everything related to the display hardware including the mode setting infrastructure, plane, sprite and cursor handling and display, output probing and related topics.

Mode Setting Infrastructure

The i915 driver is thus far the only DRM driver which doesn’t use the common DRM helper code to implement mode setting sequences. Thus it has its own tailor-made infrastructure for executing a display configuration change.

Frontbuffer Tracking

Many features require us to track changes to the currently active frontbuffer, especially rendering targeted at the frontbuffer.

To be able to do so GEM tracks frontbuffers using a bitmask for all possible frontbuffer slots through i915_gem_track_fb(). The function in this file are then called when the contents of the frontbuffer are invalidated, when frontbuffer rendering has stopped again to flush out all the changes and when the frontbuffer is exchanged with a flip. Subsystems interested in frontbuffer changes (e.g. PSR, FBC, DRRS) should directly put their callbacks into the relevant places and filter for the frontbuffer slots that they are interested int.

On a high level there are two types of powersaving features. The first one work like a special cache (FBC and PSR) and are interested when they should stop caching and when to restart caching. This is done by placing callbacks into the invalidate and the flush functions: At invalidate the caching must be stopped and at flush time it can be restarted. And maybe they need to know when the frontbuffer changes (e.g. when the hw doesn’t initiate an invalidate and flush on its own) which can be achieved with placing callbacks into the flip functions.

The other type of display power saving feature only cares about busyness (e.g. DRRS). In that case all three (invalidate, flush and flip) indicate busyness. There is no direct way to detect idleness. Instead an idle timer work delayed work should be started from the flush and flip functions and cancelled as soon as busyness is detected.

Note that there’s also an older frontbuffer activity tracking scheme which just tracks general activity. This is done by the various mark_busy and mark_idle functions. For display power management features using these functions is deprecated and should be avoided.

bool intel_fb_obj_invalidate(struct drm_i915_gem_object * obj, enum fb_op_origin origin)

invalidate frontbuffer object

Parameters

struct drm_i915_gem_object * obj
GEM object to invalidate
enum fb_op_origin origin
which operation caused the invalidation

Description

This function gets called every time rendering on the given object starts and frontbuffer caching (fbc, low refresh rate for DRRS, panel self refresh) must be invalidated. For ORIGIN_CS any subsequent invalidation will be delayed until the rendering completes or a flip on this frontbuffer plane is scheduled.

void intel_fb_obj_flush(struct drm_i915_gem_object * obj, enum fb_op_origin origin)

flush frontbuffer object

Parameters

struct drm_i915_gem_object * obj
GEM object to flush
enum fb_op_origin origin
which operation caused the flush

Description

This function gets called every time rendering on the given object has completed and frontbuffer caching can be started again.

void intel_frontbuffer_flush(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned frontbuffer_bits, enum fb_op_origin origin)

flush frontbuffer

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned frontbuffer_bits
frontbuffer plane tracking bits
enum fb_op_origin origin
which operation caused the flush

Description

This function gets called every time rendering on the given planes has completed and frontbuffer caching can be started again. Flushes will get delayed if they’re blocked by some outstanding asynchronous rendering.

Can be called without any locks held.

void intel_frontbuffer_flip_prepare(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned frontbuffer_bits)

prepare asynchronous frontbuffer flip

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned frontbuffer_bits
frontbuffer plane tracking bits

Description

This function gets called after scheduling a flip on obj. The actual frontbuffer flushing will be delayed until completion is signalled with intel_frontbuffer_flip_complete. If an invalidate happens in between this flush will be cancelled.

Can be called without any locks held.

void intel_frontbuffer_flip_complete(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned frontbuffer_bits)

complete asynchronous frontbuffer flip

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned frontbuffer_bits
frontbuffer plane tracking bits

Description

This function gets called after the flip has been latched and will complete on the next vblank. It will execute the flush if it hasn’t been cancelled yet.

Can be called without any locks held.

void intel_frontbuffer_flip(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned frontbuffer_bits)

synchronous frontbuffer flip

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned frontbuffer_bits
frontbuffer plane tracking bits

Description

This function gets called after scheduling a flip on obj. This is for synchronous plane updates which will happen on the next vblank and which will not get delayed by pending gpu rendering.

Can be called without any locks held.

void i915_gem_track_fb(struct drm_i915_gem_object * old, struct drm_i915_gem_object * new, unsigned frontbuffer_bits)

update frontbuffer tracking

Parameters

struct drm_i915_gem_object * old
current GEM buffer for the frontbuffer slots
struct drm_i915_gem_object * new
new GEM buffer for the frontbuffer slots
unsigned frontbuffer_bits
bitmask of frontbuffer slots

Description

This updates the frontbuffer tracking bits frontbuffer_bits by clearing them from old and setting them in new. Both old and new can be NULL.

Display FIFO Underrun Reporting

The i915 driver checks for display fifo underruns using the interrupt signals provided by the hardware. This is enabled by default and fairly useful to debug display issues, especially watermark settings.

If an underrun is detected this is logged into dmesg. To avoid flooding logs and occupying the cpu underrun interrupts are disabled after the first occurrence until the next modeset on a given pipe.

Note that underrun detection on gmch platforms is a bit more ugly since there is no interrupt (despite that the signalling bit is in the PIPESTAT pipe interrupt register). Also on some other platforms underrun interrupts are shared, which means that if we detect an underrun we need to disable underrun reporting on all pipes.

The code also supports underrun detection on the PCH transcoder.

bool intel_set_cpu_fifo_underrun_reporting(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum pipe pipe, bool enable)

set cpu fifo underrrun reporting state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum pipe pipe
(CPU) pipe to set state for
bool enable
whether underruns should be reported or not

Description

This function sets the fifo underrun state for pipe. It is used in the modeset code to avoid false positives since on many platforms underruns are expected when disabling or enabling the pipe.

Notice that on some platforms disabling underrun reports for one pipe disables for all due to shared interrupts. Actual reporting is still per-pipe though.

Returns the previous state of underrun reporting.

bool intel_set_pch_fifo_underrun_reporting(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum pipe pch_transcoder, bool enable)

set PCH fifo underrun reporting state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum pipe pch_transcoder
the PCH transcoder (same as pipe on IVB and older)
bool enable
whether underruns should be reported or not

Description

This function makes us disable or enable PCH fifo underruns for a specific PCH transcoder. Notice that on some PCHs (e.g. CPT/PPT), disabling FIFO underrun reporting for one transcoder may also disable all the other PCH error interruts for the other transcoders, due to the fact that there’s just one interrupt mask/enable bit for all the transcoders.

Returns the previous state of underrun reporting.

void intel_cpu_fifo_underrun_irq_handler(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum pipe pipe)

handle CPU fifo underrun interrupt

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum pipe pipe
(CPU) pipe to set state for

Description

This handles a CPU fifo underrun interrupt, generating an underrun warning into dmesg if underrun reporting is enabled and then disables the underrun interrupt to avoid an irq storm.

void intel_pch_fifo_underrun_irq_handler(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum pipe pch_transcoder)

handle PCH fifo underrun interrupt

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum pipe pch_transcoder
the PCH transcoder (same as pipe on IVB and older)

Description

This handles a PCH fifo underrun interrupt, generating an underrun warning into dmesg if underrun reporting is enabled and then disables the underrun interrupt to avoid an irq storm.

void intel_check_cpu_fifo_underruns(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

check for CPU fifo underruns immediately

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Check for CPU fifo underruns immediately. Useful on IVB/HSW where the shared error interrupt may have been disabled, and so CPU fifo underruns won’t necessarily raise an interrupt, and on GMCH platforms where underruns never raise an interrupt.

void intel_check_pch_fifo_underruns(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

check for PCH fifo underruns immediately

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Check for PCH fifo underruns immediately. Useful on CPT/PPT where the shared error interrupt may have been disabled, and so PCH fifo underruns won’t necessarily raise an interrupt.

Plane Configuration

This section covers plane configuration and composition with the primary plane, sprites, cursors and overlays. This includes the infrastructure to do atomic vsync’ed updates of all this state and also tightly coupled topics like watermark setup and computation, framebuffer compression and panel self refresh.

Atomic Plane Helpers

The functions here are used by the atomic plane helper functions to implement legacy plane updates (i.e., drm_plane->:c:func:update_plane() and drm_plane->:c:func:disable_plane()). This allows plane updates to use the atomic state infrastructure and perform plane updates as separate prepare/check/commit/cleanup steps.

struct intel_plane_state * intel_create_plane_state(struct drm_plane * plane)

create plane state object

Parameters

struct drm_plane * plane
drm plane

Description

Allocates a fresh plane state for the given plane and sets some of the state values to sensible initial values.

Return

A newly allocated plane state, or NULL on failure

struct drm_plane_state * intel_plane_duplicate_state(struct drm_plane * plane)

duplicate plane state

Parameters

struct drm_plane * plane
drm plane

Description

Allocates and returns a copy of the plane state (both common and Intel-specific) for the specified plane.

Return

The newly allocated plane state, or NULL on failure.

void intel_plane_destroy_state(struct drm_plane * plane, struct drm_plane_state * state)

destroy plane state

Parameters

struct drm_plane * plane
drm plane
struct drm_plane_state * state
state object to destroy

Description

Destroys the plane state (both common and Intel-specific) for the specified plane.

int intel_plane_atomic_get_property(struct drm_plane * plane, const struct drm_plane_state * state, struct drm_property * property, uint64_t * val)

fetch plane property value

Parameters

struct drm_plane * plane
plane to fetch property for
const struct drm_plane_state * state
state containing the property value
struct drm_property * property
property to look up
uint64_t * val
pointer to write property value into

Description

The DRM core does not store shadow copies of properties for atomic-capable drivers. This entrypoint is used to fetch the current value of a driver-specific plane property.

int intel_plane_atomic_set_property(struct drm_plane * plane, struct drm_plane_state * state, struct drm_property * property, uint64_t val)

set plane property value

Parameters

struct drm_plane * plane
plane to set property for
struct drm_plane_state * state
state to update property value in
struct drm_property * property
property to set
uint64_t val
value to set property to

Description

Writes the specified property value for a plane into the provided atomic state object.

Returns 0 on success, -EINVAL on unrecognized properties

Output Probing

This section covers output probing and related infrastructure like the hotplug interrupt storm detection and mitigation code. Note that the i915 driver still uses most of the common DRM helper code for output probing, so those sections fully apply.

Hotplug

Simply put, hotplug occurs when a display is connected to or disconnected from the system. However, there may be adapters and docking stations and Display Port short pulses and MST devices involved, complicating matters.

Hotplug in i915 is handled in many different levels of abstraction.

The platform dependent interrupt handling code in i915_irq.c enables, disables, and does preliminary handling of the interrupts. The interrupt handlers gather the hotplug detect (HPD) information from relevant registers into a platform independent mask of hotplug pins that have fired.

The platform independent interrupt handler intel_hpd_irq_handler() in intel_hotplug.c does hotplug irq storm detection and mitigation, and passes further processing to appropriate bottom halves (Display Port specific and regular hotplug).

The Display Port work function i915_digport_work_func() calls into intel_dp_hpd_pulse() via hooks, which handles DP short pulses and DP MST long pulses, with failures and non-MST long pulses triggering regular hotplug processing on the connector.

The regular hotplug work function i915_hotplug_work_func() calls connector detect hooks, and, if connector status changes, triggers sending of hotplug uevent to userspace via drm_kms_helper_hotplug_event().

Finally, the userspace is responsible for triggering a modeset upon receiving the hotplug uevent, disabling or enabling the crtc as needed.

The hotplug interrupt storm detection and mitigation code keeps track of the number of interrupts per hotplug pin per a period of time, and if the number of interrupts exceeds a certain threshold, the interrupt is disabled for a while before being re-enabled. The intention is to mitigate issues raising from broken hardware triggering massive amounts of interrupts and grinding the system to a halt.

Current implementation expects that hotplug interrupt storm will not be seen when display port sink is connected, hence on platforms whose DP callback is handled by i915_digport_work_func reenabling of hpd is not performed (it was never expected to be disabled in the first place ;) ) this is specific to DP sinks handled by this routine and any other display such as HDMI or DVI enabled on the same port will have proper logic since it will use i915_hotplug_work_func where this logic is handled.

enum hpd_pin intel_hpd_pin_default(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum port port)

return default pin associated with certain port.

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
private driver data pointer
enum port port
the hpd port to get associated pin

Description

It is only valid and used by digital port encoder.

Return pin that is associatade with port and HDP_NONE if no pin is hard associated with that port.

bool intel_hpd_irq_storm_detect(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum hpd_pin pin)

gather stats and detect HPD irq storm on a pin

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
private driver data pointer
enum hpd_pin pin
the pin to gather stats on

Description

Gather stats about HPD irqs from the specified pin, and detect irq storms. Only the pin specific stats and state are changed, the caller is responsible for further action.

The number of irqs that are allowed within HPD_STORM_DETECT_PERIOD is stored in dev_priv->hotplug.hpd_storm_threshold which defaults to HPD_STORM_DEFAULT_THRESHOLD. If this threshold is exceeded, it’s considered an irq storm and the irq state is set to HPD_MARK_DISABLED.

The HPD threshold can be controlled through i915_hpd_storm_ctl in debugfs, and should only be adjusted for automated hotplug testing.

Return true if an irq storm was detected on pin.

void intel_hpd_irq_handler(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, u32 pin_mask, u32 long_mask)

main hotplug irq handler

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
drm_i915_private
u32 pin_mask
a mask of hpd pins that have triggered the irq
u32 long_mask
a mask of hpd pins that may be long hpd pulses

Description

This is the main hotplug irq handler for all platforms. The platform specific irq handlers call the platform specific hotplug irq handlers, which read and decode the appropriate registers into bitmasks about hpd pins that have triggered (pin_mask), and which of those pins may be long pulses (long_mask). The long_mask is ignored if the port corresponding to the pin is not a digital port.

Here, we do hotplug irq storm detection and mitigation, and pass further processing to appropriate bottom halves.

void intel_hpd_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initializes and enables hpd support

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function enables the hotplug support. It requires that interrupts have already been enabled with intel_irq_init_hw(). From this point on hotplug and poll request can run concurrently to other code, so locking rules must be obeyed.

This is a separate step from interrupt enabling to simplify the locking rules in the driver load and resume code.

Also see: intel_hpd_poll_init(), which enables connector polling

void intel_hpd_poll_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

enables/disables polling for connectors with hpd

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function enables polling for all connectors, regardless of whether or not they support hotplug detection. Under certain conditions HPD may not be functional. On most Intel GPUs, this happens when we enter runtime suspend. On Valleyview and Cherryview systems, this also happens when we shut off all of the powerwells.

Since this function can get called in contexts where we’re already holding dev->mode_config.mutex, we do the actual hotplug enabling in a seperate worker.

Also see: intel_hpd_init(), which restores hpd handling.

High Definition Audio

The graphics and audio drivers together support High Definition Audio over HDMI and Display Port. The audio programming sequences are divided into audio codec and controller enable and disable sequences. The graphics driver handles the audio codec sequences, while the audio driver handles the audio controller sequences.

The disable sequences must be performed before disabling the transcoder or port. The enable sequences may only be performed after enabling the transcoder and port, and after completed link training. Therefore the audio enable/disable sequences are part of the modeset sequence.

The codec and controller sequences could be done either parallel or serial, but generally the ELDV/PD change in the codec sequence indicates to the audio driver that the controller sequence should start. Indeed, most of the co-operation between the graphics and audio drivers is handled via audio related registers. (The notable exception is the power management, not covered here.)

The struct i915_audio_component is used to interact between the graphics and audio drivers. The struct i915_audio_component_ops ops in it is defined in graphics driver and called in audio driver. The struct i915_audio_component_audio_ops audio_ops is called from i915 driver.

void intel_audio_codec_enable(struct intel_encoder * encoder, const struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state, const struct drm_connector_state * conn_state)

Enable the audio codec for HD audio

Parameters

struct intel_encoder * encoder
encoder on which to enable audio
const struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state
pointer to the current crtc state.
const struct drm_connector_state * conn_state
pointer to the current connector state.

Description

The enable sequences may only be performed after enabling the transcoder and port, and after completed link training.

void intel_audio_codec_disable(struct intel_encoder * encoder, const struct intel_crtc_state * old_crtc_state, const struct drm_connector_state * old_conn_state)

Disable the audio codec for HD audio

Parameters

struct intel_encoder * encoder
encoder on which to disable audio
const struct intel_crtc_state * old_crtc_state
pointer to the old crtc state.
const struct drm_connector_state * old_conn_state
pointer to the old connector state.

Description

The disable sequences must be performed before disabling the transcoder or port.

void intel_init_audio_hooks(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Set up chip specific audio hooks

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
device private
void i915_audio_component_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initialize and register the audio component

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This will register with the component framework a child component which will bind dynamically to the snd_hda_intel driver’s corresponding master component when the latter is registered. During binding the child initializes an instance of struct i915_audio_component which it receives from the master. The master can then start to use the interface defined by this struct. Each side can break the binding at any point by deregistering its own component after which each side’s component unbind callback is called.

We ignore any error during registration and continue with reduced functionality (i.e. without HDMI audio).

void i915_audio_component_cleanup(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

deregister the audio component

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Deregisters the audio component, breaking any existing binding to the corresponding snd_hda_intel driver’s master component.

void intel_audio_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Initialize the audio driver either using component framework or using lpe audio bridge

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 drm device private data
void intel_audio_deinit(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

deinitialize the audio driver

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 drm device private data
struct i915_audio_component

Used for direct communication between i915 and hda drivers

Definition

struct i915_audio_component {
  struct drm_audio_component      base;
  int aud_sample_rate[MAX_PORTS];
};

Members

base
the drm_audio_component base class
aud_sample_rate
the array of audio sample rate per port

Intel HDMI LPE Audio Support

Motivation: Atom platforms (e.g. valleyview and cherryTrail) integrates a DMA-based interface as an alternative to the traditional HDaudio path. While this mode is unrelated to the LPE aka SST audio engine, the documentation refers to this mode as LPE so we keep this notation for the sake of consistency.

The interface is handled by a separate standalone driver maintained in the ALSA subsystem for simplicity. To minimize the interaction between the two subsystems, a bridge is setup between the hdmi-lpe-audio and i915: 1. Create a platform device to share MMIO/IRQ resources 2. Make the platform device child of i915 device for runtime PM. 3. Create IRQ chip to forward the LPE audio irqs. the hdmi-lpe-audio driver probes the lpe audio device and creates a new sound card

Threats: Due to the restriction in Linux platform device model, user need manually uninstall the hdmi-lpe-audio driver before uninstalling i915 module, otherwise we might run into use-after-free issues after i915 removes the platform device: even though hdmi-lpe-audio driver is released, the modules is still in “installed” status.

Implementation: The MMIO/REG platform resources are created according to the registers specification. When forwarding LPE audio irqs, the flow control handler selection depends on the platform, for example on valleyview handle_simple_irq is enough.

void intel_lpe_audio_irq_handler(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

forwards the LPE audio irq

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 drm device private data

Description

the LPE Audio irq is forwarded to the irq handler registered by LPE audio driver.

int intel_lpe_audio_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

detect and setup the bridge between HDMI LPE Audio driver and i915

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 drm device private data

Return

0 if successful. non-zero if detection or llocation/initialization fails

void intel_lpe_audio_teardown(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

destroy the bridge between HDMI LPE audio driver and i915

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 drm device private data

Description

release all the resources for LPE audio <-> i915 bridge.

void intel_lpe_audio_notify(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum pipe pipe, enum port port, const void * eld, int ls_clock, bool dp_output)

notify lpe audio event audio driver and i915

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 drm device private data
enum pipe pipe
pipe
enum port port
port
const void * eld
ELD data
int ls_clock
Link symbol clock in kHz
bool dp_output
Driving a DP output?

Description

Notify lpe audio driver of eld change.

Panel Self Refresh PSR (PSR/SRD)

Since Haswell Display controller supports Panel Self-Refresh on display panels witch have a remote frame buffer (RFB) implemented according to PSR spec in eDP1.3. PSR feature allows the display to go to lower standby states when system is idle but display is on as it eliminates display refresh request to DDR memory completely as long as the frame buffer for that display is unchanged.

Panel Self Refresh must be supported by both Hardware (source) and Panel (sink).

PSR saves power by caching the framebuffer in the panel RFB, which allows us to power down the link and memory controller. For DSI panels the same idea is called “manual mode”.

The implementation uses the hardware-based PSR support which automatically enters/exits self-refresh mode. The hardware takes care of sending the required DP aux message and could even retrain the link (that part isn’t enabled yet though). The hardware also keeps track of any frontbuffer changes to know when to exit self-refresh mode again. Unfortunately that part doesn’t work too well, hence why the i915 PSR support uses the software frontbuffer tracking to make sure it doesn’t miss a screen update. For this integration intel_psr_invalidate() and intel_psr_flush() get called by the frontbuffer tracking code. Note that because of locking issues the self-refresh re-enable code is done from a work queue, which must be correctly synchronized/cancelled when shutting down the pipe.”

void intel_psr_enable(struct intel_dp * intel_dp, const struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state)

Enable PSR

Parameters

struct intel_dp * intel_dp
Intel DP
const struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state
new CRTC state

Description

This function can only be called after the pipe is fully trained and enabled.

void intel_psr_disable(struct intel_dp * intel_dp, const struct intel_crtc_state * old_crtc_state)

Disable PSR

Parameters

struct intel_dp * intel_dp
Intel DP
const struct intel_crtc_state * old_crtc_state
old CRTC state

Description

This function needs to be called before disabling pipe.

int intel_psr_wait_for_idle(const struct intel_crtc_state * new_crtc_state, u32 * out_value)

wait for PSR1 to idle

Parameters

const struct intel_crtc_state * new_crtc_state
new CRTC state
u32 * out_value
PSR status in case of failure

Description

This function is expected to be called from pipe_update_start() where it is not expected to race with PSR enable or disable.

Return

0 on success or -ETIMEOUT if PSR status does not idle.

void intel_psr_invalidate(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned frontbuffer_bits, enum fb_op_origin origin)

Invalidade PSR

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned frontbuffer_bits
frontbuffer plane tracking bits
enum fb_op_origin origin
which operation caused the invalidate

Description

Since the hardware frontbuffer tracking has gaps we need to integrate with the software frontbuffer tracking. This function gets called every time frontbuffer rendering starts and a buffer gets dirtied. PSR must be disabled if the frontbuffer mask contains a buffer relevant to PSR.

Dirty frontbuffers relevant to PSR are tracked in busy_frontbuffer_bits.”

void intel_psr_flush(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned frontbuffer_bits, enum fb_op_origin origin)

Flush PSR

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned frontbuffer_bits
frontbuffer plane tracking bits
enum fb_op_origin origin
which operation caused the flush

Description

Since the hardware frontbuffer tracking has gaps we need to integrate with the software frontbuffer tracking. This function gets called every time frontbuffer rendering has completed and flushed out to memory. PSR can be enabled again if no other frontbuffer relevant to PSR is dirty.

Dirty frontbuffers relevant to PSR are tracked in busy_frontbuffer_bits.

void intel_psr_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Init basic PSR work and mutex.

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private

Description

This function is called only once at driver load to initialize basic PSR stuff.

Frame Buffer Compression (FBC)

FBC tries to save memory bandwidth (and so power consumption) by compressing the amount of memory used by the display. It is total transparent to user space and completely handled in the kernel.

The benefits of FBC are mostly visible with solid backgrounds and variation-less patterns. It comes from keeping the memory footprint small and having fewer memory pages opened and accessed for refreshing the display.

i915 is responsible to reserve stolen memory for FBC and configure its offset on proper registers. The hardware takes care of all compress/decompress. However there are many known cases where we have to forcibly disable it to allow proper screen updates.

bool intel_fbc_is_active(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Is FBC active?

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function is used to verify the current state of FBC.

FIXME: This should be tracked in the plane config eventually instead of queried at runtime for most callers.

void __intel_fbc_disable(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

disable FBC

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This is the low level function that actually disables FBC. Callers should grab the FBC lock.

void intel_fbc_choose_crtc(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, struct intel_atomic_state * state)

select a CRTC to enable FBC on

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
struct intel_atomic_state * state
the atomic state structure

Description

This function looks at the proposed state for CRTCs and planes, then chooses which pipe is going to have FBC by setting intel_crtc_state->enable_fbc to true.

Later, intel_fbc_enable is going to look for state->enable_fbc and then maybe enable FBC for the chosen CRTC. If it does, it will set dev_priv->fbc.crtc.

void intel_fbc_enable(struct intel_crtc * crtc, struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state, struct intel_plane_state * plane_state)

Parameters

struct intel_crtc * crtc
the CRTC
struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state
corresponding drm_crtc_state for crtc
struct intel_plane_state * plane_state
corresponding drm_plane_state for the primary plane of crtc

Description

This function checks if the given CRTC was chosen for FBC, then enables it if possible. Notice that it doesn’t activate FBC. It is valid to call intel_fbc_enable multiple times for the same pipe without an intel_fbc_disable in the middle, as long as it is deactivated.

void intel_fbc_disable(struct intel_crtc * crtc)

disable FBC if it’s associated with crtc

Parameters

struct intel_crtc * crtc
the CRTC

Description

This function disables FBC if it’s associated with the provided CRTC.

void intel_fbc_global_disable(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

globally disable FBC

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This function disables FBC regardless of which CRTC is associated with it.

void intel_fbc_handle_fifo_underrun_irq(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

disable FBC when we get a FIFO underrun

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Without FBC, most underruns are harmless and don’t really cause too many problems, except for an annoying message on dmesg. With FBC, underruns can become black screens or even worse, especially when paired with bad watermarks. So in order for us to be on the safe side, completely disable FBC in case we ever detect a FIFO underrun on any pipe. An underrun on any pipe already suggests that watermarks may be bad, so try to be as safe as possible.

This function is called from the IRQ handler.

void intel_fbc_init_pipe_state(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initialize FBC’s CRTC visibility tracking

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

The FBC code needs to track CRTC visibility since the older platforms can’t have FBC enabled while multiple pipes are used. This function does the initial setup at driver load to make sure FBC is matching the real hardware.

void intel_fbc_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Initialize FBC

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
the i915 device

Description

This function might be called during PM init process.

Display Refresh Rate Switching (DRRS)

Display Refresh Rate Switching (DRRS) is a power conservation feature which enables swtching between low and high refresh rates, dynamically, based on the usage scenario. This feature is applicable for internal panels.

Indication that the panel supports DRRS is given by the panel EDID, which would list multiple refresh rates for one resolution.

DRRS is of 2 types - static and seamless. Static DRRS involves changing refresh rate (RR) by doing a full modeset (may appear as a blink on screen) and is used in dock-undock scenario. Seamless DRRS involves changing RR without any visual effect to the user and can be used during normal system usage. This is done by programming certain registers.

Support for static/seamless DRRS may be indicated in the VBT based on inputs from the panel spec.

DRRS saves power by switching to low RR based on usage scenarios.

The implementation is based on frontbuffer tracking implementation. When there is a disturbance on the screen triggered by user activity or a periodic system activity, DRRS is disabled (RR is changed to high RR). When there is no movement on screen, after a timeout of 1 second, a switch to low RR is made.

For integration with frontbuffer tracking code, intel_edp_drrs_invalidate() and intel_edp_drrs_flush() are called.

DRRS can be further extended to support other internal panels and also the scenario of video playback wherein RR is set based on the rate requested by userspace.

void intel_dp_set_drrs_state(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, const struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state, int refresh_rate)

program registers for RR switch to take effect

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
const struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state
a pointer to the active intel_crtc_state
int refresh_rate
RR to be programmed

Description

This function gets called when refresh rate (RR) has to be changed from one frequency to another. Switches can be between high and low RR supported by the panel or to any other RR based on media playback (in this case, RR value needs to be passed from user space).

The caller of this function needs to take a lock on dev_priv->drrs.

void intel_edp_drrs_enable(struct intel_dp * intel_dp, const struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state)

init drrs struct if supported

Parameters

struct intel_dp * intel_dp
DP struct
const struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state
A pointer to the active crtc state.

Description

Initializes frontbuffer_bits and drrs.dp

void intel_edp_drrs_disable(struct intel_dp * intel_dp, const struct intel_crtc_state * old_crtc_state)

Disable DRRS

Parameters

struct intel_dp * intel_dp
DP struct
const struct intel_crtc_state * old_crtc_state
Pointer to old crtc_state.
void intel_edp_drrs_invalidate(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned int frontbuffer_bits)

Disable Idleness DRRS

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned int frontbuffer_bits
frontbuffer plane tracking bits

Description

This function gets called everytime rendering on the given planes start. Hence DRRS needs to be Upclocked, i.e. (LOW_RR -> HIGH_RR).

Dirty frontbuffers relevant to DRRS are tracked in busy_frontbuffer_bits.

void intel_edp_drrs_flush(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, unsigned int frontbuffer_bits)

Restart Idleness DRRS

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
unsigned int frontbuffer_bits
frontbuffer plane tracking bits

Description

This function gets called every time rendering on the given planes has completed or flip on a crtc is completed. So DRRS should be upclocked (LOW_RR -> HIGH_RR). And also Idleness detection should be started again, if no other planes are dirty.

Dirty frontbuffers relevant to DRRS are tracked in busy_frontbuffer_bits.

struct drm_display_mode * intel_dp_drrs_init(struct intel_connector * connector, struct drm_display_mode * fixed_mode)

Init basic DRRS work and mutex.

Parameters

struct intel_connector * connector
eDP connector
struct drm_display_mode * fixed_mode
preferred mode of panel

Description

This function is called only once at driver load to initialize basic DRRS stuff.

Return

Downclock mode if panel supports it, else return NULL. DRRS support is determined by the presence of downclock mode (apart from VBT setting).

DPIO

VLV, CHV and BXT have slightly peculiar display PHYs for driving DP/HDMI ports. DPIO is the name given to such a display PHY. These PHYs don’t follow the standard programming model using direct MMIO registers, and instead their registers must be accessed trough IOSF sideband. VLV has one such PHY for driving ports B and C, and CHV adds another PHY for driving port D. Each PHY responds to specific IOSF-SB port.

Each display PHY is made up of one or two channels. Each channel houses a common lane part which contains the PLL and other common logic. CH0 common lane also contains the IOSF-SB logic for the Common Register Interface (CRI) ie. the DPIO registers. CRI clock must be running when any DPIO registers are accessed.

In addition to having their own registers, the PHYs are also controlled through some dedicated signals from the display controller. These include PLL reference clock enable, PLL enable, and CRI clock selection, for example.

Eeach channel also has two splines (also called data lanes), and each spline is made up of one Physical Access Coding Sub-Layer (PCS) block and two TX lanes. So each channel has two PCS blocks and four TX lanes. The TX lanes are used as DP lanes or TMDS data/clock pairs depending on the output type.

Additionally the PHY also contains an AUX lane with AUX blocks for each channel. This is used for DP AUX communication, but this fact isn’t really relevant for the driver since AUX is controlled from the display controller side. No DPIO registers need to be accessed during AUX communication,

Generally on VLV/CHV the common lane corresponds to the pipe and the spline (PCS/TX) corresponds to the port.

For dual channel PHY (VLV/CHV):

pipe A == CMN/PLL/REF CH0

pipe B == CMN/PLL/REF CH1

port B == PCS/TX CH0

port C == PCS/TX CH1

This is especially important when we cross the streams ie. drive port B with pipe B, or port C with pipe A.

For single channel PHY (CHV):

pipe C == CMN/PLL/REF CH0

port D == PCS/TX CH0

On BXT the entire PHY channel corresponds to the port. That means the PLL is also now associated with the port rather than the pipe, and so the clock needs to be routed to the appropriate transcoder. Port A PLL is directly connected to transcoder EDP and port B/C PLLs can be routed to any transcoder A/B/C.

Note: DDI0 is digital port B, DD1 is digital port C, and DDI2 is digital port D (CHV) or port A (BXT).

Dual channel PHY (VLV/CHV/BXT)
---------------------------------
|      CH0      |      CH1      |
|  CMN/PLL/REF  |  CMN/PLL/REF  |
|---------------|---------------| Display PHY
| PCS01 | PCS23 | PCS01 | PCS23 |
|-------|-------|-------|-------|
|TX0|TX1|TX2|TX3|TX0|TX1|TX2|TX3|
---------------------------------
|     DDI0      |     DDI1      | DP/HDMI ports
---------------------------------

Single channel PHY (CHV/BXT)
-----------------
|      CH0      |
|  CMN/PLL/REF  |
|---------------| Display PHY
| PCS01 | PCS23 |
|-------|-------|
|TX0|TX1|TX2|TX3|
-----------------
|     DDI2      | DP/HDMI port
-----------------

CSR firmware support for DMC

Display Context Save and Restore (CSR) firmware support added from gen9 onwards to drive newly added DMC (Display microcontroller) in display engine to save and restore the state of display engine when it enter into low-power state and comes back to normal.

void intel_csr_load_program(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

write the firmware from memory to register.

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 drm device.

Description

CSR firmware is read from a .bin file and kept in internal memory one time. Everytime display comes back from low power state this function is called to copy the firmware from internal memory to registers.

void intel_csr_ucode_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initialize the firmware loading.

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 drm device.

Description

This function is called at the time of loading the display driver to read firmware from a .bin file and copied into a internal memory.

void intel_csr_ucode_suspend(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

prepare CSR firmware before system suspend

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 drm device

Description

Prepare the DMC firmware before entering system suspend. This includes flushing pending work items and releasing any resources acquired during init.

void intel_csr_ucode_resume(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

init CSR firmware during system resume

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 drm device

Description

Reinitialize the DMC firmware during system resume, reacquiring any resources released in intel_csr_ucode_suspend().

void intel_csr_ucode_fini(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

unload the CSR firmware.

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 drm device.

Description

Firmmware unloading includes freeing the internal memory and reset the firmware loading status.

Video BIOS Table (VBT)

The Video BIOS Table, or VBT, provides platform and board specific configuration information to the driver that is not discoverable or available through other means. The configuration is mostly related to display hardware. The VBT is available via the ACPI OpRegion or, on older systems, in the PCI ROM.

The VBT consists of a VBT Header (defined as struct vbt_header), a BDB Header (struct bdb_header), and a number of BIOS Data Blocks (BDB) that contain the actual configuration information. The VBT Header, and thus the VBT, begins with “$VBT” signature. The VBT Header contains the offset of the BDB Header. The data blocks are concatenated after the BDB Header. The data blocks have a 1-byte Block ID, 2-byte Block Size, and Block Size bytes of data. (Block 53, the MIPI Sequence Block is an exception.)

The driver parses the VBT during load. The relevant information is stored in driver private data for ease of use, and the actual VBT is not read after that.

bool intel_bios_is_valid_vbt(const void * buf, size_t size)

does the given buffer contain a valid VBT

Parameters

const void * buf
pointer to a buffer to validate
size_t size
size of the buffer

Description

Returns true on valid VBT.

void intel_bios_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

find VBT and initialize settings from the BIOS

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Parse and initialize settings from the Video BIOS Tables (VBT). If the VBT was not found in ACPI OpRegion, try to find it in PCI ROM first. Also initialize some defaults if the VBT is not present at all.

void intel_bios_cleanup(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Free any resources allocated by intel_bios_init()

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
bool intel_bios_is_tv_present(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

is integrated TV present in VBT

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Return true if TV is present. If no child devices were parsed from VBT, assume TV is present.

bool intel_bios_is_lvds_present(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, u8 * i2c_pin)

is LVDS present in VBT

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
u8 * i2c_pin
i2c pin for LVDS if present

Description

Return true if LVDS is present. If no child devices were parsed from VBT, assume LVDS is present.

bool intel_bios_is_port_present(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum port port)

is the specified digital port present

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum port port
port to check

Description

Return true if the device in port is present.

bool intel_bios_is_port_edp(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum port port)

is the device in given port eDP

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum port port
port to check

Description

Return true if the device in port is eDP.

bool intel_bios_is_dsi_present(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum port * port)

is DSI present in VBT

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum port * port
port for DSI if present

Description

Return true if DSI is present, and return the port in port.

bool intel_bios_is_port_hpd_inverted(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum port port)

is HPD inverted for port

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum port port
port to check

Description

Return true if HPD should be inverted for port.

bool intel_bios_is_lspcon_present(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum port port)

if LSPCON is attached on port

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum port port
port to check

Description

Return true if LSPCON is present on this port

struct vbt_header

VBT Header structure

Definition

struct vbt_header {
  u8 signature[20];
  u16 version;
  u16 header_size;
  u16 vbt_size;
  u8 vbt_checksum;
  u8 reserved0;
  u32 bdb_offset;
  u32 aim_offset[4];
};

Members

signature
VBT signature, always starts with “$VBT”
version
Version of this structure
header_size
Size of this structure
vbt_size
Size of VBT (VBT Header, BDB Header and data blocks)
vbt_checksum
Checksum
reserved0
Reserved
bdb_offset
Offset of struct bdb_header from beginning of VBT
aim_offset
Offsets of add-in data blocks from beginning of VBT
struct bdb_header

BDB Header structure

Definition

struct bdb_header {
  u8 signature[16];
  u16 version;
  u16 header_size;
  u16 bdb_size;
};

Members

signature
BDB signature “BIOS_DATA_BLOCK”
version
Version of the data block definitions
header_size
Size of this structure
bdb_size
Size of BDB (BDB Header and data blocks)

Display clocks

The display engine uses several different clocks to do its work. There are two main clocks involved that aren’t directly related to the actual pixel clock or any symbol/bit clock of the actual output port. These are the core display clock (CDCLK) and RAWCLK.

CDCLK clocks most of the display pipe logic, and thus its frequency must be high enough to support the rate at which pixels are flowing through the pipes. Downscaling must also be accounted as that increases the effective pixel rate.

On several platforms the CDCLK frequency can be changed dynamically to minimize power consumption for a given display configuration. Typically changes to the CDCLK frequency require all the display pipes to be shut down while the frequency is being changed.

On SKL+ the DMC will toggle the CDCLK off/on during DC5/6 entry/exit. DMC will not change the active CDCLK frequency however, so that part will still be performed by the driver directly.

RAWCLK is a fixed frequency clock, often used by various auxiliary blocks such as AUX CH or backlight PWM. Hence the only thing we really need to know about RAWCLK is its frequency so that various dividers can be programmed correctly.

void skl_init_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Initialize CDCLK on SKL

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Initialize CDCLK for SKL and derivatives. This is generally done only during the display core initialization sequence, after which the DMC will take care of turning CDCLK off/on as needed.

void skl_uninit_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Uninitialize CDCLK on SKL

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Uninitialize CDCLK for SKL and derivatives. This is done only during the display core uninitialization sequence.

void bxt_init_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Initialize CDCLK on BXT

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Initialize CDCLK for BXT and derivatives. This is generally done only during the display core initialization sequence, after which the DMC will take care of turning CDCLK off/on as needed.

void bxt_uninit_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Uninitialize CDCLK on BXT

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Uninitialize CDCLK for BXT and derivatives. This is done only during the display core uninitialization sequence.

void icl_init_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Initialize CDCLK on ICL

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Initialize CDCLK for ICL. This consists mainly of initializing dev_priv->cdclk.hw and sanitizing the state of the hardware if needed. This is generally done only during the display core initialization sequence, after which the DMC will take care of turning CDCLK off/on as needed.

void icl_uninit_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Uninitialize CDCLK on ICL

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Uninitialize CDCLK for ICL. This is done only during the display core uninitialization sequence.

void cnl_init_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Initialize CDCLK on CNL

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Initialize CDCLK for CNL. This is generally done only during the display core initialization sequence, after which the DMC will take care of turning CDCLK off/on as needed.

void cnl_uninit_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Uninitialize CDCLK on CNL

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Uninitialize CDCLK for CNL. This is done only during the display core uninitialization sequence.

bool intel_cdclk_needs_modeset(const struct intel_cdclk_state * a, const struct intel_cdclk_state * b)

Determine if two CDCLK states require a modeset on all pipes

Parameters

const struct intel_cdclk_state * a
first CDCLK state
const struct intel_cdclk_state * b
second CDCLK state

Return

True if the CDCLK states require pipes to be off during reprogramming, false if not.

bool intel_cdclk_changed(const struct intel_cdclk_state * a, const struct intel_cdclk_state * b)

Determine if two CDCLK states are different

Parameters

const struct intel_cdclk_state * a
first CDCLK state
const struct intel_cdclk_state * b
second CDCLK state

Return

True if the CDCLK states don’t match, false if they do.

void intel_set_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, const struct intel_cdclk_state * cdclk_state)

Push the CDCLK state to the hardware

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
const struct intel_cdclk_state * cdclk_state
new CDCLK state

Description

Program the hardware based on the passed in CDCLK state, if necessary.

void intel_update_max_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Determine the maximum support CDCLK frequency

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Determine the maximum CDCLK frequency the platform supports, and also derive the maximum dot clock frequency the maximum CDCLK frequency allows.

void intel_update_cdclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Determine the current CDCLK frequency

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Determine the current CDCLK frequency.

void intel_update_rawclk(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Determine the current RAWCLK frequency

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Description

Determine the current RAWCLK frequency. RAWCLK is a fixed frequency clock so this needs to done only once.

void intel_init_cdclk_hooks(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Initialize CDCLK related modesetting hooks

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device

Display PLLs

Display PLLs used for driving outputs vary by platform. While some have per-pipe or per-encoder dedicated PLLs, others allow the use of any PLL from a pool. In the latter scenario, it is possible that multiple pipes share a PLL if their configurations match.

This file provides an abstraction over display PLLs. The function intel_shared_dpll_init() initializes the PLLs for the given platform. The users of a PLL are tracked and that tracking is integrated with the atomic modest interface. During an atomic operation, a PLL can be requested for a given CRTC and encoder configuration by calling intel_get_shared_dpll() and a previously used PLL can be released with intel_release_shared_dpll(). Changes to the users are first staged in the atomic state, and then made effective by calling intel_shared_dpll_swap_state() during the atomic commit phase.

struct intel_shared_dpll * intel_get_shared_dpll_by_id(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, enum intel_dpll_id id)

get a DPLL given its id

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
enum intel_dpll_id id
pll id

Return

A pointer to the DPLL with id

enum intel_dpll_id intel_get_shared_dpll_id(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, struct intel_shared_dpll * pll)

get the id of a DPLL

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
struct intel_shared_dpll * pll
the DPLL

Return

The id of pll

void intel_prepare_shared_dpll(struct intel_crtc * crtc)

call a dpll’s prepare hook

Parameters

struct intel_crtc * crtc
CRTC which has a shared dpll

Description

This calls the PLL’s prepare hook if it has one and if the PLL is not already enabled. The prepare hook is platform specific.

void intel_enable_shared_dpll(struct intel_crtc * crtc)

enable a CRTC’s shared DPLL

Parameters

struct intel_crtc * crtc
CRTC which has a shared DPLL

Description

Enable the shared DPLL used by crtc.

void intel_disable_shared_dpll(struct intel_crtc * crtc)

disable a CRTC’s shared DPLL

Parameters

struct intel_crtc * crtc
CRTC which has a shared DPLL

Description

Disable the shared DPLL used by crtc.

void intel_shared_dpll_swap_state(struct drm_atomic_state * state)

make atomic DPLL configuration effective

Parameters

struct drm_atomic_state * state
atomic state

Description

This is the dpll version of drm_atomic_helper_swap_state() since the helper does not handle driver-specific global state.

For consistency with atomic helpers this function does a complete swap, i.e. it also puts the current state into state, even though there is no need for that at this moment.

void intel_shared_dpll_init(struct drm_device * dev)

Initialize shared DPLLs

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
drm device

Description

Initialize shared DPLLs for dev.

struct intel_shared_dpll * intel_get_shared_dpll(struct intel_crtc * crtc, struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state, struct intel_encoder * encoder)

get a shared DPLL for CRTC and encoder combination

Parameters

struct intel_crtc * crtc
CRTC
struct intel_crtc_state * crtc_state
atomic state for crtc
struct intel_encoder * encoder
encoder

Description

Find an appropriate DPLL for the given CRTC and encoder combination. A reference from the crtc to the returned pll is registered in the atomic state. That configuration is made effective by calling intel_shared_dpll_swap_state(). The reference should be released by calling intel_release_shared_dpll().

Return

A shared DPLL to be used by crtc and encoder with the given crtc_state.

void intel_release_shared_dpll(struct intel_shared_dpll * dpll, struct intel_crtc * crtc, struct drm_atomic_state * state)

end use of DPLL by CRTC in atomic state

Parameters

struct intel_shared_dpll * dpll
dpll in use by crtc
struct intel_crtc * crtc
crtc
struct drm_atomic_state * state
atomic state

Description

This function releases the reference from crtc to dpll from the atomic state. The new configuration is made effective by calling intel_shared_dpll_swap_state().

void intel_dpll_dump_hw_state(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, struct intel_dpll_hw_state * hw_state)

write hw_state to dmesg

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 drm device
struct intel_dpll_hw_state * hw_state
hw state to be written to the log

Description

Write the relevant values in hw_state to dmesg using DRM_DEBUG_KMS.

enum intel_dpll_id

possible DPLL ids

Constants

DPLL_ID_PRIVATE
non-shared dpll in use
DPLL_ID_PCH_PLL_A
DPLL A in ILK, SNB and IVB
DPLL_ID_PCH_PLL_B
DPLL B in ILK, SNB and IVB
DPLL_ID_WRPLL1
HSW and BDW WRPLL1
DPLL_ID_WRPLL2
HSW and BDW WRPLL2
DPLL_ID_SPLL
HSW and BDW SPLL
DPLL_ID_LCPLL_810
HSW and BDW 0.81 GHz LCPLL
DPLL_ID_LCPLL_1350
HSW and BDW 1.35 GHz LCPLL
DPLL_ID_LCPLL_2700
HSW and BDW 2.7 GHz LCPLL
DPLL_ID_SKL_DPLL0
SKL and later DPLL0
DPLL_ID_SKL_DPLL1
SKL and later DPLL1
DPLL_ID_SKL_DPLL2
SKL and later DPLL2
DPLL_ID_SKL_DPLL3
SKL and later DPLL3
DPLL_ID_ICL_DPLL0
ICL combo PHY DPLL0
DPLL_ID_ICL_DPLL1
ICL combo PHY DPLL1
DPLL_ID_ICL_TBTPLL
ICL TBT PLL
DPLL_ID_ICL_MGPLL1
ICL MG PLL 1 port 1 (C)
DPLL_ID_ICL_MGPLL2
ICL MG PLL 1 port 2 (D)
DPLL_ID_ICL_MGPLL3
ICL MG PLL 1 port 3 (E)
DPLL_ID_ICL_MGPLL4
ICL MG PLL 1 port 4 (F)

Description

Enumeration of possible IDs for a DPLL. Real shared dpll ids must be >= 0.

struct intel_shared_dpll_state

hold the DPLL atomic state

Definition

struct intel_shared_dpll_state {
  unsigned crtc_mask;
  struct intel_dpll_hw_state hw_state;
};

Members

crtc_mask
mask of CRTC using this DPLL, active or not
hw_state
hardware configuration for the DPLL stored in struct intel_dpll_hw_state.

Description

This structure holds an atomic state for the DPLL, that can represent either its current state (in struct intel_shared_dpll) or a desired future state which would be applied by an atomic mode set (stored in a struct intel_atomic_state).

See also intel_get_shared_dpll() and intel_release_shared_dpll().

struct intel_shared_dpll_funcs

platform specific hooks for managing DPLLs

Definition

struct intel_shared_dpll_funcs {
  void (*prepare)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv, struct intel_shared_dpll *pll);
  void (*enable)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv, struct intel_shared_dpll *pll);
  void (*disable)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv, struct intel_shared_dpll *pll);
  bool (*get_hw_state)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv,struct intel_shared_dpll *pll, struct intel_dpll_hw_state *hw_state);
};

Members

prepare
Optional hook to perform operations prior to enabling the PLL. Called from intel_prepare_shared_dpll() function unless the PLL is already enabled.
enable
Hook for enabling the pll, called from intel_enable_shared_dpll() if the pll is not already enabled.
disable
Hook for disabling the pll, called from intel_disable_shared_dpll() only when it is safe to disable the pll, i.e., there are no more tracked users for it.
get_hw_state
Hook for reading the values currently programmed to the DPLL registers. This is used for initial hw state readout and state verification after a mode set.
struct dpll_info

display PLL platform specific info

Definition

struct dpll_info {
  const char *name;
  const struct intel_shared_dpll_funcs *funcs;
  enum intel_dpll_id id;
#define INTEL_DPLL_ALWAYS_ON    (1 << 0);
  uint32_t flags;
};

Members

name
DPLL name; used for logging
funcs
platform specific hooks
id
unique indentifier for this DPLL; should match the index in the dev_priv->shared_dplls array
flags
INTEL_DPLL_ALWAYS_ON
Inform the state checker that the DPLL is kept enabled even if not in use by any CRTC.
struct intel_shared_dpll

display PLL with tracked state and users

Definition

struct intel_shared_dpll {
  struct intel_shared_dpll_state state;
  unsigned active_mask;
  bool on;
  const struct dpll_info *info;
};

Members

state
Store the state for the pll, including the its hw state and CRTCs using it.
active_mask
mask of active CRTCs (i.e. DPMS on) using this DPLL
on
is the PLL actually active? Disabled during modeset
info
platform specific info

Memory Management and Command Submission

This sections covers all things related to the GEM implementation in the i915 driver.

Intel GPU Basics

An Intel GPU has multiple engines. There are several engine types.

  • RCS engine is for rendering 3D and performing compute, this is named I915_EXEC_RENDER in user space.
  • BCS is a blitting (copy) engine, this is named I915_EXEC_BLT in user space.
  • VCS is a video encode and decode engine, this is named I915_EXEC_BSD in user space
  • VECS is video enhancement engine, this is named I915_EXEC_VEBOX in user space.
  • The enumeration I915_EXEC_DEFAULT does not refer to specific engine; instead it is to be used by user space to specify a default rendering engine (for 3D) that may or may not be the same as RCS.

The Intel GPU family is a family of integrated GPU’s using Unified Memory Access. For having the GPU “do work”, user space will feed the GPU batch buffers via one of the ioctls DRM_IOCTL_I915_GEM_EXECBUFFER2 or DRM_IOCTL_I915_GEM_EXECBUFFER2_WR. Most such batchbuffers will instruct the GPU to perform work (for example rendering) and that work needs memory from which to read and memory to which to write. All memory is encapsulated within GEM buffer objects (usually created with the ioctl DRM_IOCTL_I915_GEM_CREATE). An ioctl providing a batchbuffer for the GPU to create will also list all GEM buffer objects that the batchbuffer reads and/or writes. For implementation details of memory management see GEM BO Management Implementation Details.

The i915 driver allows user space to create a context via the ioctl DRM_IOCTL_I915_GEM_CONTEXT_CREATE which is identified by a 32-bit integer. Such a context should be viewed by user-space as -loosely- analogous to the idea of a CPU process of an operating system. The i915 driver guarantees that commands issued to a fixed context are to be executed so that writes of a previously issued command are seen by reads of following commands. Actions issued between different contexts (even if from the same file descriptor) are NOT given that guarantee and the only way to synchronize across contexts (even from the same file descriptor) is through the use of fences. At least as far back as Gen4, also have that a context carries with it a GPU HW context; the HW context is essentially (most of atleast) the state of a GPU. In addition to the ordering guarantees, the kernel will restore GPU state via HW context when commands are issued to a context, this saves user space the need to restore (most of atleast) the GPU state at the start of each batchbuffer. The non-deprecated ioctls to submit batchbuffer work can pass that ID (in the lower bits of drm_i915_gem_execbuffer2::rsvd1) to identify what context to use with the command.

The GPU has its own memory management and address space. The kernel driver maintains the memory translation table for the GPU. For older GPUs (i.e. those before Gen8), there is a single global such translation table, a global Graphics Translation Table (GTT). For newer generation GPUs each context has its own translation table, called Per-Process Graphics Translation Table (PPGTT). Of important note, is that although PPGTT is named per-process it is actually per context. When user space submits a batchbuffer, the kernel walks the list of GEM buffer objects used by the batchbuffer and guarantees that not only is the memory of each such GEM buffer object resident but it is also present in the (PP)GTT. If the GEM buffer object is not yet placed in the (PP)GTT, then it is given an address. Two consequences of this are: the kernel needs to edit the batchbuffer submitted to write the correct value of the GPU address when a GEM BO is assigned a GPU address and the kernel might evict a different GEM BO from the (PP)GTT to make address room for another GEM BO. Consequently, the ioctls submitting a batchbuffer for execution also include a list of all locations within buffers that refer to GPU-addresses so that the kernel can edit the buffer correctly. This process is dubbed relocation.

GEM BO Management Implementation Details

Buffer Object Eviction

This section documents the interface functions for evicting buffer objects to make space available in the virtual gpu address spaces. Note that this is mostly orthogonal to shrinking buffer objects caches, which has the goal to make main memory (shared with the gpu through the unified memory architecture) available.

int i915_gem_evict_something(struct i915_address_space * vm, u64 min_size, u64 alignment, unsigned cache_level, u64 start, u64 end, unsigned flags)

Evict vmas to make room for binding a new one

Parameters

struct i915_address_space * vm
address space to evict from
u64 min_size
size of the desired free space
u64 alignment
alignment constraint of the desired free space
unsigned cache_level
cache_level for the desired space
u64 start
start (inclusive) of the range from which to evict objects
u64 end
end (exclusive) of the range from which to evict objects
unsigned flags
additional flags to control the eviction algorithm

Description

This function will try to evict vmas until a free space satisfying the requirements is found. Callers must check first whether any such hole exists already before calling this function.

This function is used by the object/vma binding code.

Since this function is only used to free up virtual address space it only ignores pinned vmas, and not object where the backing storage itself is pinned. Hence obj->pages_pin_count does not protect against eviction.

To clarify: This is for freeing up virtual address space, not for freeing memory in e.g. the shrinker.

int i915_gem_evict_for_node(struct i915_address_space * vm, struct drm_mm_node * target, unsigned int flags)

Evict vmas to make room for binding a new one

Parameters

struct i915_address_space * vm
address space to evict from
struct drm_mm_node * target
range (and color) to evict for
unsigned int flags
additional flags to control the eviction algorithm

Description

This function will try to evict vmas that overlap the target node.

To clarify: This is for freeing up virtual address space, not for freeing memory in e.g. the shrinker.

int i915_gem_evict_vm(struct i915_address_space * vm)

Evict all idle vmas from a vm

Parameters

struct i915_address_space * vm
Address space to cleanse

Description

This function evicts all vmas from a vm.

This is used by the execbuf code as a last-ditch effort to defragment the address space.

To clarify: This is for freeing up virtual address space, not for freeing memory in e.g. the shrinker.

Buffer Object Memory Shrinking

This section documents the interface function for shrinking memory usage of buffer object caches. Shrinking is used to make main memory available. Note that this is mostly orthogonal to evicting buffer objects, which has the goal to make space in gpu virtual address spaces.

unsigned long i915_gem_shrink(struct drm_i915_private * i915, unsigned long target, unsigned long * nr_scanned, unsigned flags)

Shrink buffer object caches

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * i915
i915 device
unsigned long target
amount of memory to make available, in pages
unsigned long * nr_scanned
optional output for number of pages scanned (incremental)
unsigned flags
control flags for selecting cache types

Description

This function is the main interface to the shrinker. It will try to release up to target pages of main memory backing storage from buffer objects. Selection of the specific caches can be done with flags. This is e.g. useful when purgeable objects should be removed from caches preferentially.

Note that it’s not guaranteed that released amount is actually available as free system memory - the pages might still be in-used to due to other reasons (like cpu mmaps) or the mm core has reused them before we could grab them. Therefore code that needs to explicitly shrink buffer objects caches (e.g. to avoid deadlocks in memory reclaim) must fall back to i915_gem_shrink_all().

Also note that any kind of pinning (both per-vma address space pins and backing storage pins at the buffer object level) result in the shrinker code having to skip the object.

Return

The number of pages of backing storage actually released.

unsigned long i915_gem_shrink_all(struct drm_i915_private * i915)

Shrink buffer object caches completely

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * i915
i915 device

Description

This is a simple wraper around i915_gem_shrink() to aggressively shrink all caches completely. It also first waits for and retires all outstanding requests to also be able to release backing storage for active objects.

This should only be used in code to intentionally quiescent the gpu or as a last-ditch effort when memory seems to have run out.

Return

The number of pages of backing storage actually released.

void i915_gem_shrinker_register(struct drm_i915_private * i915)

Register the i915 shrinker

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * i915
i915 device

Description

This function registers and sets up the i915 shrinker and OOM handler.

void i915_gem_shrinker_unregister(struct drm_i915_private * i915)

Unregisters the i915 shrinker

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * i915
i915 device

Description

This function unregisters the i915 shrinker and OOM handler.

Batchbuffer Parsing

Motivation: Certain OpenGL features (e.g. transform feedback, performance monitoring) require userspace code to submit batches containing commands such as MI_LOAD_REGISTER_IMM to access various registers. Unfortunately, some generations of the hardware will noop these commands in “unsecure” batches (which includes all userspace batches submitted via i915) even though the commands may be safe and represent the intended programming model of the device.

The software command parser is similar in operation to the command parsing done in hardware for unsecure batches. However, the software parser allows some operations that would be noop’d by hardware, if the parser determines the operation is safe, and submits the batch as “secure” to prevent hardware parsing.

Threats: At a high level, the hardware (and software) checks attempt to prevent granting userspace undue privileges. There are three categories of privilege.

First, commands which are explicitly defined as privileged or which should only be used by the kernel driver. The parser generally rejects such commands, though it may allow some from the drm master process.

Second, commands which access registers. To support correct/enhanced userspace functionality, particularly certain OpenGL extensions, the parser provides a whitelist of registers which userspace may safely access (for both normal and drm master processes).

Third, commands which access privileged memory (i.e. GGTT, HWS page, etc). The parser always rejects such commands.

The majority of the problematic commands fall in the MI_* range, with only a few specific commands on each engine (e.g. PIPE_CONTROL and MI_FLUSH_DW).

Implementation: Each engine maintains tables of commands and registers which the parser uses in scanning batch buffers submitted to that engine.

Since the set of commands that the parser must check for is significantly smaller than the number of commands supported, the parser tables contain only those commands required by the parser. This generally works because command opcode ranges have standard command length encodings. So for commands that the parser does not need to check, it can easily skip them. This is implemented via a per-engine length decoding vfunc.

Unfortunately, there are a number of commands that do not follow the standard length encoding for their opcode range, primarily amongst the MI_* commands. To handle this, the parser provides a way to define explicit “skip” entries in the per-engine command tables.

Other command table entries map fairly directly to high level categories mentioned above: rejected, master-only, register whitelist. The parser implements a number of checks, including the privileged memory checks, via a general bitmasking mechanism.

void intel_engine_init_cmd_parser(struct intel_engine_cs * engine)

set cmd parser related fields for an engine

Parameters

struct intel_engine_cs * engine
the engine to initialize

Description

Optionally initializes fields related to batch buffer command parsing in the struct intel_engine_cs based on whether the platform requires software command parsing.

void intel_engine_cleanup_cmd_parser(struct intel_engine_cs * engine)

clean up cmd parser related fields

Parameters

struct intel_engine_cs * engine
the engine to clean up

Description

Releases any resources related to command parsing that may have been initialized for the specified engine.

int intel_engine_cmd_parser(struct intel_engine_cs * engine, struct drm_i915_gem_object * batch_obj, struct drm_i915_gem_object * shadow_batch_obj, u32 batch_start_offset, u32 batch_len, bool is_master)

parse a submitted batch buffer for privilege violations

Parameters

struct intel_engine_cs * engine
the engine on which the batch is to execute
struct drm_i915_gem_object * batch_obj
the batch buffer in question
struct drm_i915_gem_object * shadow_batch_obj
copy of the batch buffer in question
u32 batch_start_offset
byte offset in the batch at which execution starts
u32 batch_len
length of the commands in batch_obj
bool is_master
is the submitting process the drm master?

Description

Parses the specified batch buffer looking for privilege violations as described in the overview.

Return

non-zero if the parser finds violations or otherwise fails; -EACCES if the batch appears legal but should use hardware parsing

int i915_cmd_parser_get_version(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

get the cmd parser version number

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private

Description

The cmd parser maintains a simple increasing integer version number suitable for passing to userspace clients to determine what operations are permitted.

Return

the current version number of the cmd parser

Batchbuffer Pools

In order to submit batch buffers as ‘secure’, the software command parser must ensure that a batch buffer cannot be modified after parsing. It does this by copying the user provided batch buffer contents to a kernel owned buffer from which the hardware will actually execute, and by carefully managing the address space bindings for such buffers.

The batch pool framework provides a mechanism for the driver to manage a set of scratch buffers to use for this purpose. The framework can be extended to support other uses cases should they arise.

void i915_gem_batch_pool_init(struct i915_gem_batch_pool * pool, struct intel_engine_cs * engine)

initialize a batch buffer pool

Parameters

struct i915_gem_batch_pool * pool
the batch buffer pool
struct intel_engine_cs * engine
the associated request submission engine
void i915_gem_batch_pool_fini(struct i915_gem_batch_pool * pool)

clean up a batch buffer pool

Parameters

struct i915_gem_batch_pool * pool
the pool to clean up

Note

Callers must hold the struct_mutex.

struct drm_i915_gem_object * i915_gem_batch_pool_get(struct i915_gem_batch_pool * pool, size_t size)

allocate a buffer from the pool

Parameters

struct i915_gem_batch_pool * pool
the batch buffer pool
size_t size
the minimum desired size of the returned buffer

Description

Returns an inactive buffer from pool with at least size bytes, with the pages pinned. The caller must i915_gem_object_unpin_pages() on the returned object.

Note

Callers must hold the struct_mutex

Return

the buffer object or an error pointer

User Batchbuffer Execution

Userspace submits commands to be executed on the GPU as an instruction stream within a GEM object we call a batchbuffer. This instructions may refer to other GEM objects containing auxiliary state such as kernels, samplers, render targets and even secondary batchbuffers. Userspace does not know where in the GPU memory these objects reside and so before the batchbuffer is passed to the GPU for execution, those addresses in the batchbuffer and auxiliary objects are updated. This is known as relocation, or patching. To try and avoid having to relocate each object on the next execution, userspace is told the location of those objects in this pass, but this remains just a hint as the kernel may choose a new location for any object in the future.

At the level of talking to the hardware, submitting a batchbuffer for the GPU to execute is to add content to a buffer from which the HW command streamer is reading.

  1. Add a command to load the HW context. For Logical Ring Contexts, i.e. Execlists, this command is not placed on the same buffer as the remaining items.
  2. Add a command to invalidate caches to the buffer.
  3. Add a batchbuffer start command to the buffer; the start command is essentially a token together with the GPU address of the batchbuffer to be executed.
  4. Add a pipeline flush to the buffer.
  5. Add a memory write command to the buffer to record when the GPU is done executing the batchbuffer. The memory write writes the global sequence number of the request, i915_request::global_seqno; the i915 driver uses the current value in the register to determine if the GPU has completed the batchbuffer.
  6. Add a user interrupt command to the buffer. This command instructs the GPU to issue an interrupt when the command, pipeline flush and memory write are completed.
  7. Inform the hardware of the additional commands added to the buffer (by updating the tail pointer).

Processing an execbuf ioctl is conceptually split up into a few phases.

  1. Validation - Ensure all the pointers, handles and flags are valid.
  2. Reservation - Assign GPU address space for every object
  3. Relocation - Update any addresses to point to the final locations
  4. Serialisation - Order the request with respect to its dependencies
  5. Construction - Construct a request to execute the batchbuffer
  6. Submission (at some point in the future execution)

Reserving resources for the execbuf is the most complicated phase. We neither want to have to migrate the object in the address space, nor do we want to have to update any relocations pointing to this object. Ideally, we want to leave the object where it is and for all the existing relocations to match. If the object is given a new address, or if userspace thinks the object is elsewhere, we have to parse all the relocation entries and update the addresses. Userspace can set the I915_EXEC_NORELOC flag to hint that all the target addresses in all of its objects match the value in the relocation entries and that they all match the presumed offsets given by the list of execbuffer objects. Using this knowledge, we know that if we haven’t moved any buffers, all the relocation entries are valid and we can skip the update. (If userspace is wrong, the likely outcome is an impromptu GPU hang.) The requirement for using I915_EXEC_NO_RELOC are:

The addresses written in the objects must match the corresponding reloc.presumed_offset which in turn must match the corresponding execobject.offset.

Any render targets written to in the batch must be flagged with EXEC_OBJECT_WRITE.

To avoid stalling, execobject.offset should match the current address of that object within the active context.

The reservation is done is multiple phases. First we try and keep any object already bound in its current location - so as long as meets the constraints imposed by the new execbuffer. Any object left unbound after the first pass is then fitted into any available idle space. If an object does not fit, all objects are removed from the reservation and the process rerun after sorting the objects into a priority order (more difficult to fit objects are tried first). Failing that, the entire VM is cleared and we try to fit the execbuf once last time before concluding that it simply will not fit.

A small complication to all of this is that we allow userspace not only to specify an alignment and a size for the object in the address space, but we also allow userspace to specify the exact offset. This objects are simpler to place (the location is known a priori) all we have to do is make sure the space is available.

Once all the objects are in place, patching up the buried pointers to point to the final locations is a fairly simple job of walking over the relocation entry arrays, looking up the right address and rewriting the value into the object. Simple! ... The relocation entries are stored in user memory and so to access them we have to copy them into a local buffer. That copy has to avoid taking any pagefaults as they may lead back to a GEM object requiring the struct_mutex (i.e. recursive deadlock). So once again we split the relocation into multiple passes. First we try to do everything within an atomic context (avoid the pagefaults) which requires that we never wait. If we detect that we may wait, or if we need to fault, then we have to fallback to a slower path. The slowpath has to drop the mutex. (Can you hear alarm bells yet?) Dropping the mutex means that we lose all the state we have built up so far for the execbuf and we must reset any global data. However, we do leave the objects pinned in their final locations - which is a potential issue for concurrent execbufs. Once we have left the mutex, we can allocate and copy all the relocation entries into a large array at our leisure, reacquire the mutex, reclaim all the objects and other state and then proceed to update any incorrect addresses with the objects.

As we process the relocation entries, we maintain a record of whether the object is being written to. Using NORELOC, we expect userspace to provide this information instead. We also check whether we can skip the relocation by comparing the expected value inside the relocation entry with the target’s final address. If they differ, we have to map the current object and rewrite the 4 or 8 byte pointer within.

Serialising an execbuf is quite simple according to the rules of the GEM ABI. Execution within each context is ordered by the order of submission. Writes to any GEM object are in order of submission and are exclusive. Reads from a GEM object are unordered with respect to other reads, but ordered by writes. A write submitted after a read cannot occur before the read, and similarly any read submitted after a write cannot occur before the write. Writes are ordered between engines such that only one write occurs at any time (completing any reads beforehand) - using semaphores where available and CPU serialisation otherwise. Other GEM access obey the same rules, any write (either via mmaps using set-domain, or via pwrite) must flush all GPU reads before starting, and any read (either using set-domain or pread) must flush all GPU writes before starting. (Note we only employ a barrier before, we currently rely on userspace not concurrently starting a new execution whilst reading or writing to an object. This may be an advantage or not depending on how much you trust userspace not to shoot themselves in the foot.) Serialisation may just result in the request being inserted into a DAG awaiting its turn, but most simple is to wait on the CPU until all dependencies are resolved.

After all of that, is just a matter of closing the request and handing it to the hardware (well, leaving it in a queue to be executed). However, we also offer the ability for batchbuffers to be run with elevated privileges so that they access otherwise hidden registers. (Used to adjust L3 cache etc.) Before any batch is given extra privileges we first must check that it contains no nefarious instructions, we check that each instruction is from our whitelist and all registers are also from an allowed list. We first copy the user’s batchbuffer to a shadow (so that the user doesn’t have access to it, either by the CPU or GPU as we scan it) and then parse each instruction. If everything is ok, we set a flag telling the hardware to run the batchbuffer in trusted mode, otherwise the ioctl is rejected.

Logical Rings, Logical Ring Contexts and Execlists

Motivation: GEN8 brings an expansion of the HW contexts: “Logical Ring Contexts”. These expanded contexts enable a number of new abilities, especially “Execlists” (also implemented in this file).

One of the main differences with the legacy HW contexts is that logical ring contexts incorporate many more things to the context’s state, like PDPs or ringbuffer control registers:

The reason why PDPs are included in the context is straightforward: as PPGTTs (per-process GTTs) are actually per-context, having the PDPs contained there mean you don’t need to do a ppgtt->switch_mm yourself, instead, the GPU will do it for you on the context switch.

But, what about the ringbuffer control registers (head, tail, etc..)? shouldn’t we just need a set of those per engine command streamer? This is where the name “Logical Rings” starts to make sense: by virtualizing the rings, the engine cs shifts to a new “ring buffer” with every context switch. When you want to submit a workload to the GPU you: A) choose your context, B) find its appropriate virtualized ring, C) write commands to it and then, finally, D) tell the GPU to switch to that context.

Instead of the legacy MI_SET_CONTEXT, the way you tell the GPU to switch to a contexts is via a context execution list, ergo “Execlists”.

LRC implementation: Regarding the creation of contexts, we have:

  • One global default context.
  • One local default context for each opened fd.
  • One local extra context for each context create ioctl call.

Now that ringbuffers belong per-context (and not per-engine, like before) and that contexts are uniquely tied to a given engine (and not reusable, like before) we need:

  • One ringbuffer per-engine inside each context.
  • One backing object per-engine inside each context.

The global default context starts its life with these new objects fully allocated and populated. The local default context for each opened fd is more complex, because we don’t know at creation time which engine is going to use them. To handle this, we have implemented a deferred creation of LR contexts:

The local context starts its life as a hollow or blank holder, that only gets populated for a given engine once we receive an execbuffer. If later on we receive another execbuffer ioctl for the same context but a different engine, we allocate/populate a new ringbuffer and context backing object and so on.

Finally, regarding local contexts created using the ioctl call: as they are only allowed with the render ring, we can allocate & populate them right away (no need to defer anything, at least for now).

Execlists implementation: Execlists are the new method by which, on gen8+ hardware, workloads are submitted for execution (as opposed to the legacy, ringbuffer-based, method). This method works as follows:

When a request is committed, its commands (the BB start and any leading or trailing commands, like the seqno breadcrumbs) are placed in the ringbuffer for the appropriate context. The tail pointer in the hardware context is not updated at this time, but instead, kept by the driver in the ringbuffer structure. A structure representing this request is added to a request queue for the appropriate engine: this structure contains a copy of the context’s tail after the request was written to the ring buffer and a pointer to the context itself.

If the engine’s request queue was empty before the request was added, the queue is processed immediately. Otherwise the queue will be processed during a context switch interrupt. In any case, elements on the queue will get sent (in pairs) to the GPU’s ExecLists Submit Port (ELSP, for short) with a globally unique 20-bits submission ID.

When execution of a request completes, the GPU updates the context status buffer with a context complete event and generates a context switch interrupt. During the interrupt handling, the driver examines the events in the buffer: for each context complete event, if the announced ID matches that on the head of the request queue, then that request is retired and removed from the queue.

After processing, if any requests were retired and the queue is not empty then a new execution list can be submitted. The two requests at the front of the queue are next to be submitted but since a context may not occur twice in an execution list, if subsequent requests have the same ID as the first then the two requests must be combined. This is done simply by discarding requests at the head of the queue until either only one requests is left (in which case we use a NULL second context) or the first two requests have unique IDs.

By always executing the first two requests in the queue the driver ensures that the GPU is kept as busy as possible. In the case where a single context completes but a second context is still executing, the request for this second context will be at the head of the queue when we remove the first one. This request will then be resubmitted along with a new request for a different context, which will cause the hardware to continue executing the second request and queue the new request (the GPU detects the condition of a context getting preempted with the same context and optimizes the context switch flow by not doing preemption, but just sampling the new tail pointer).

void intel_logical_ring_cleanup(struct intel_engine_cs * engine)

deallocate the Engine Command Streamer

Parameters

struct intel_engine_cs * engine
Engine Command Streamer.

Global GTT views

Background and previous state

Historically objects could exists (be bound) in global GTT space only as singular instances with a view representing all of the object’s backing pages in a linear fashion. This view will be called a normal view.

To support multiple views of the same object, where the number of mapped pages is not equal to the backing store, or where the layout of the pages is not linear, concept of a GGTT view was added.

One example of an alternative view is a stereo display driven by a single image. In this case we would have a framebuffer looking like this (2x2 pages):

12 34

Above would represent a normal GGTT view as normally mapped for GPU or CPU rendering. In contrast, fed to the display engine would be an alternative view which could look something like this:

1212 3434

In this example both the size and layout of pages in the alternative view is different from the normal view.

Implementation and usage

GGTT views are implemented using VMAs and are distinguished via enum i915_ggtt_view_type and struct i915_ggtt_view.

A new flavour of core GEM functions which work with GGTT bound objects were added with the _ggtt_ infix, and sometimes with _view postfix to avoid renaming in large amounts of code. They take the struct i915_ggtt_view parameter encapsulating all metadata required to implement a view.

As a helper for callers which are only interested in the normal view, globally const i915_ggtt_view_normal singleton instance exists. All old core GEM API functions, the ones not taking the view parameter, are operating on, or with the normal GGTT view.

Code wanting to add or use a new GGTT view needs to:

  1. Add a new enum with a suitable name.
  2. Extend the metadata in the i915_ggtt_view structure if required.
  3. Add support to i915_get_vma_pages().

New views are required to build a scatter-gather table from within the i915_get_vma_pages function. This table is stored in the vma.ggtt_view and exists for the lifetime of an VMA.

Core API is designed to have copy semantics which means that passed in struct i915_ggtt_view does not need to be persistent (left around after calling the core API functions).

void i915_ggtt_cleanup_hw(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Clean up GGTT hardware initialization

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
const struct intel_ppat_entry * intel_ppat_get(struct drm_i915_private * i915, u8 value)

get a usable PPAT entry

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * i915
i915 device instance
u8 value
the PPAT value required by the caller

Description

The function tries to search if there is an existing PPAT entry which matches with the required value. If perfectly matched, the existing PPAT entry will be used. If only partially matched, it will try to check if there is any available PPAT index. If yes, it will allocate a new PPAT index for the required entry and update the HW. If not, the partially matched entry will be used.

void intel_ppat_put(const struct intel_ppat_entry * entry)

put back the PPAT entry got from intel_ppat_get()

Parameters

const struct intel_ppat_entry * entry
an intel PPAT entry

Description

Put back the PPAT entry got from intel_ppat_get(). If the PPAT index of the entry is dynamically allocated, its reference count will be decreased. Once the reference count becomes into zero, the PPAT index becomes free again.

int i915_ggtt_probe_hw(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Probe GGTT hardware location

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
int i915_ggtt_init_hw(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Initialize GGTT hardware

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device
int i915_gem_gtt_reserve(struct i915_address_space * vm, struct drm_mm_node * node, u64 size, u64 offset, unsigned long color, unsigned int flags)

reserve a node in an address_space (GTT)

Parameters

struct i915_address_space * vm
the struct i915_address_space
struct drm_mm_node * node
the struct drm_mm_node (typically i915_vma.mode)
u64 size
how much space to allocate inside the GTT, must be #I915_GTT_PAGE_SIZE aligned
u64 offset
where to insert inside the GTT, must be #I915_GTT_MIN_ALIGNMENT aligned, and the node (offset + size) must fit within the address space
unsigned long color
color to apply to node, if this node is not from a VMA, color must be #I915_COLOR_UNEVICTABLE
unsigned int flags
control search and eviction behaviour

Description

i915_gem_gtt_reserve() tries to insert the node at the exact offset inside the address space (using size and color). If the node does not fit, it tries to evict any overlapping nodes from the GTT, including any neighbouring nodes if the colors do not match (to ensure guard pages between differing domains). See i915_gem_evict_for_node() for the gory details on the eviction algorithm. #PIN_NONBLOCK may used to prevent waiting on evicting active overlapping objects, and any overlapping node that is pinned or marked as unevictable will also result in failure.

Return

0 on success, -ENOSPC if no suitable hole is found, -EINTR if asked to wait for eviction and interrupted.

int i915_gem_gtt_insert(struct i915_address_space * vm, struct drm_mm_node * node, u64 size, u64 alignment, unsigned long color, u64 start, u64 end, unsigned int flags)

insert a node into an address_space (GTT)

Parameters

struct i915_address_space * vm
the struct i915_address_space
struct drm_mm_node * node
the struct drm_mm_node (typically i915_vma.node)
u64 size
how much space to allocate inside the GTT, must be #I915_GTT_PAGE_SIZE aligned
u64 alignment
required alignment of starting offset, may be 0 but if specified, this must be a power-of-two and at least #I915_GTT_MIN_ALIGNMENT
unsigned long color
color to apply to node
u64 start
start of any range restriction inside GTT (0 for all), must be #I915_GTT_PAGE_SIZE aligned
u64 end
end of any range restriction inside GTT (U64_MAX for all), must be #I915_GTT_PAGE_SIZE aligned if not U64_MAX
unsigned int flags
control search and eviction behaviour

Description

i915_gem_gtt_insert() first searches for an available hole into which is can insert the node. The hole address is aligned to alignment and its size must then fit entirely within the [start, end] bounds. The nodes on either side of the hole must match color, or else a guard page will be inserted between the two nodes (or the node evicted). If no suitable hole is found, first a victim is randomly selected and tested for eviction, otherwise then the LRU list of objects within the GTT is scanned to find the first set of replacement nodes to create the hole. Those old overlapping nodes are evicted from the GTT (and so must be rebound before any future use). Any node that is currently pinned cannot be evicted (see i915_vma_pin()). Similar if the node’s VMA is currently active and #PIN_NONBLOCK is specified, that node is also skipped when searching for an eviction candidate. See i915_gem_evict_something() for the gory details on the eviction algorithm.

Return

0 on success, -ENOSPC if no suitable hole is found, -EINTR if asked to wait for eviction and interrupted.

GTT Fences and Swizzling

int i915_vma_put_fence(struct i915_vma * vma)

force-remove fence for a VMA

Parameters

struct i915_vma * vma
vma to map linearly (not through a fence reg)

Description

This function force-removes any fence from the given object, which is useful if the kernel wants to do untiled GTT access.

Return

0 on success, negative error code on failure.

int i915_vma_pin_fence(struct i915_vma * vma)

set up fencing for a vma

Parameters

struct i915_vma * vma
vma to map through a fence reg

Description

When mapping objects through the GTT, userspace wants to be able to write to them without having to worry about swizzling if the object is tiled. This function walks the fence regs looking for a free one for obj, stealing one if it can’t find any.

It then sets up the reg based on the object’s properties: address, pitch and tiling format.

For an untiled surface, this removes any existing fence.

Return

0 on success, negative error code on failure.

struct drm_i915_fence_reg * i915_reserve_fence(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Reserve a fence for vGPU

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private

Description

This function walks the fence regs looking for a free one and remove it from the fence_list. It is used to reserve fence for vGPU to use.

void i915_unreserve_fence(struct drm_i915_fence_reg * fence)

Reclaim a reserved fence

Parameters

struct drm_i915_fence_reg * fence
the fence reg

Description

This function add a reserved fence register from vGPU to the fence_list.

void i915_gem_revoke_fences(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

revoke fence state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private

Description

Removes all GTT mmappings via the fence registers. This forces any user of the fence to reacquire that fence before continuing with their access. One use is during GPU reset where the fence register is lost and we need to revoke concurrent userspace access via GTT mmaps until the hardware has been reset and the fence registers have been restored.

void i915_gem_restore_fences(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

restore fence state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private

Description

Restore the hw fence state to match the software tracking again, to be called after a gpu reset and on resume. Note that on runtime suspend we only cancel the fences, to be reacquired by the user later.

void i915_gem_detect_bit_6_swizzle(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

detect bit 6 swizzling pattern

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device private

Description

Detects bit 6 swizzling of address lookup between IGD access and CPU access through main memory.

void i915_gem_object_do_bit_17_swizzle(struct drm_i915_gem_object * obj, struct sg_table * pages)

fixup bit 17 swizzling

Parameters

struct drm_i915_gem_object * obj
i915 GEM buffer object
struct sg_table * pages
the scattergather list of physical pages

Description

This function fixes up the swizzling in case any page frame number for this object has changed in bit 17 since that state has been saved with i915_gem_object_save_bit_17_swizzle().

This is called when pinning backing storage again, since the kernel is free to move unpinned backing storage around (either by directly moving pages or by swapping them out and back in again).

void i915_gem_object_save_bit_17_swizzle(struct drm_i915_gem_object * obj, struct sg_table * pages)

save bit 17 swizzling

Parameters

struct drm_i915_gem_object * obj
i915 GEM buffer object
struct sg_table * pages
the scattergather list of physical pages

Description

This function saves the bit 17 of each page frame number so that swizzling can be fixed up later on with i915_gem_object_do_bit_17_swizzle(). This must be called before the backing storage can be unpinned.

Global GTT Fence Handling

Important to avoid confusions: “fences” in the i915 driver are not execution fences used to track command completion but hardware detiler objects which wrap a given range of the global GTT. Each platform has only a fairly limited set of these objects.

Fences are used to detile GTT memory mappings. They’re also connected to the hardware frontbuffer render tracking and hence interact with frontbuffer compression. Furthermore on older platforms fences are required for tiled objects used by the display engine. They can also be used by the render engine - they’re required for blitter commands and are optional for render commands. But on gen4+ both display (with the exception of fbc) and rendering have their own tiling state bits and don’t need fences.

Also note that fences only support X and Y tiling and hence can’t be used for the fancier new tiling formats like W, Ys and Yf.

Finally note that because fences are such a restricted resource they’re dynamically associated with objects. Furthermore fence state is committed to the hardware lazily to avoid unnecessary stalls on gen2/3. Therefore code must explicitly call i915_gem_object_get_fence() to synchronize fencing status for cpu access. Also note that some code wants an unfenced view, for those cases the fence can be removed forcefully with i915_gem_object_put_fence().

Internally these functions will synchronize with userspace access by removing CPU ptes into GTT mmaps (not the GTT ptes themselves) as needed.

Hardware Tiling and Swizzling Details

The idea behind tiling is to increase cache hit rates by rearranging pixel data so that a group of pixel accesses are in the same cacheline. Performance improvement from doing this on the back/depth buffer are on the order of 30%.

Intel architectures make this somewhat more complicated, though, by adjustments made to addressing of data when the memory is in interleaved mode (matched pairs of DIMMS) to improve memory bandwidth. For interleaved memory, the CPU sends every sequential 64 bytes to an alternate memory channel so it can get the bandwidth from both.

The GPU also rearranges its accesses for increased bandwidth to interleaved memory, and it matches what the CPU does for non-tiled. However, when tiled it does it a little differently, since one walks addresses not just in the X direction but also Y. So, along with alternating channels when bit 6 of the address flips, it also alternates when other bits flip – Bits 9 (every 512 bytes, an X tile scanline) and 10 (every two X tile scanlines) are common to both the 915 and 965-class hardware.

The CPU also sometimes XORs in higher bits as well, to improve bandwidth doing strided access like we do so frequently in graphics. This is called “Channel XOR Randomization” in the MCH documentation. The result is that the CPU is XORing in either bit 11 or bit 17 to bit 6 of its address decode.

All of this bit 6 XORing has an effect on our memory management, as we need to make sure that the 3d driver can correctly address object contents.

If we don’t have interleaved memory, all tiling is safe and no swizzling is required.

When bit 17 is XORed in, we simply refuse to tile at all. Bit 17 is not just a page offset, so as we page an object out and back in, individual pages in it will have different bit 17 addresses, resulting in each 64 bytes being swapped with its neighbor!

Otherwise, if interleaved, we have to tell the 3d driver what the address swizzling it needs to do is, since it’s writing with the CPU to the pages (bit 6 and potentially bit 11 XORed in), and the GPU is reading from the pages (bit 6, 9, and 10 XORed in), resulting in a cumulative bit swizzling required by the CPU of XORing in bit 6, 9, 10, and potentially 11, in order to match what the GPU expects.

Object Tiling IOCTLs

u32 i915_gem_fence_size(struct drm_i915_private * i915, u32 size, unsigned int tiling, unsigned int stride)

required global GTT size for a fence

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * i915
i915 device
u32 size
object size
unsigned int tiling
tiling mode
unsigned int stride
tiling stride

Description

Return the required global GTT size for a fence (view of a tiled object), taking into account potential fence register mapping.

u32 i915_gem_fence_alignment(struct drm_i915_private * i915, u32 size, unsigned int tiling, unsigned int stride)

required global GTT alignment for a fence

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * i915
i915 device
u32 size
object size
unsigned int tiling
tiling mode
unsigned int stride
tiling stride

Description

Return the required global GTT alignment for a fence (a view of a tiled object), taking into account potential fence register mapping.

int i915_gem_set_tiling_ioctl(struct drm_device * dev, void * data, struct drm_file * file)

IOCTL handler to set tiling mode

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
DRM device
void * data
data pointer for the ioctl
struct drm_file * file
DRM file for the ioctl call

Description

Sets the tiling mode of an object, returning the required swizzling of bit 6 of addresses in the object.

Called by the user via ioctl.

Return

Zero on success, negative errno on failure.

int i915_gem_get_tiling_ioctl(struct drm_device * dev, void * data, struct drm_file * file)

IOCTL handler to get tiling mode

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
DRM device
void * data
data pointer for the ioctl
struct drm_file * file
DRM file for the ioctl call

Description

Returns the current tiling mode and required bit 6 swizzling for the object.

Called by the user via ioctl.

Return

Zero on success, negative errno on failure.

i915_gem_set_tiling_ioctl() and i915_gem_get_tiling_ioctl() is the userspace interface to declare fence register requirements.

In principle GEM doesn’t care at all about the internal data layout of an object, and hence it also doesn’t care about tiling or swizzling. There’s two exceptions:

  • For X and Y tiling the hardware provides detilers for CPU access, so called fences. Since there’s only a limited amount of them the kernel must manage these, and therefore userspace must tell the kernel the object tiling if it wants to use fences for detiling.
  • On gen3 and gen4 platforms have a swizzling pattern for tiled objects which depends upon the physical page frame number. When swapping such objects the page frame number might change and the kernel must be able to fix this up and hence now the tiling. Note that on a subset of platforms with asymmetric memory channel population the swizzling pattern changes in an unknown way, and for those the kernel simply forbids swapping completely.

Since neither of this applies for new tiling layouts on modern platforms like W, Ys and Yf tiling GEM only allows object tiling to be set to X or Y tiled. Anything else can be handled in userspace entirely without the kernel’s invovlement.

WOPCM

WOPCM Layout

The layout of the WOPCM will be fixed after writing to GuC WOPCM size and offset registers whose values are calculated and determined by HuC/GuC firmware size and set of hardware requirements/restrictions as shown below:

  +=========> +====================+ <== WOPCM Top
  ^           |  HW contexts RSVD  |
  |     +===> +====================+ <== GuC WOPCM Top
  |     ^     |                    |
  |     |     |                    |
  |     |     |                    |
  |    GuC    |                    |
  |   WOPCM   |                    |
  |    Size   +--------------------+
WOPCM   |     |    GuC FW RSVD     |
  |     |     +--------------------+
  |     |     |   GuC Stack RSVD   |
  |     |     +------------------- +
  |     v     |   GuC WOPCM RSVD   |
  |     +===> +====================+ <== GuC WOPCM base
  |           |     WOPCM RSVD     |
  |           +------------------- + <== HuC Firmware Top
  v           |      HuC FW        |
  +=========> +====================+ <== WOPCM Base

GuC accessible WOPCM starts at GuC WOPCM base and ends at GuC WOPCM top. The top part of the WOPCM is reserved for hardware contexts (e.g. RC6 context).

GuC

GuC-specific firmware loader

void intel_guc_fw_init_early(struct intel_guc * guc)

initializes GuC firmware struct

Parameters

struct intel_guc * guc
intel_guc struct

Description

On platforms with GuC selects firmware for uploading

int intel_guc_fw_upload(struct intel_guc * guc)

load GuC uCode to device

Parameters

struct intel_guc * guc
intel_guc structure

Description

Called from intel_uc_init_hw() during driver load, resume from sleep and after a GPU reset.

The firmware image should have already been fetched into memory, so only check that fetch succeeded, and then transfer the image to the h/w.

Return

non-zero code on error

GuC-based command submission

GuC client: A intel_guc_client refers to a submission path through GuC. Currently, there are two clients. One of them (the execbuf_client) is charged with all submissions to the GuC, the other one (preempt_client) is responsible for preempting the execbuf_client. This struct is the owner of a doorbell, a process descriptor and a workqueue (all of them inside a single gem object that contains all required pages for these elements).

GuC stage descriptor: During initialization, the driver allocates a static pool of 1024 such descriptors, and shares them with the GuC. Currently, there exists a 1:1 mapping between a intel_guc_client and a guc_stage_desc (via the client’s stage_id), so effectively only one gets used. This stage descriptor lets the GuC know about the doorbell, workqueue and process descriptor. Theoretically, it also lets the GuC know about our HW contexts (context ID, etc...), but we actually employ a kind of submission where the GuC uses the LRCA sent via the work item instead (the single guc_stage_desc associated to execbuf client contains information about the default kernel context only, but this is essentially unused). This is called a “proxy” submission.

The Scratch registers: There are 16 MMIO-based registers start from 0xC180. The kernel driver writes a value to the action register (SOFT_SCRATCH_0) along with any data. It then triggers an interrupt on the GuC via another register write (0xC4C8). Firmware writes a success/fail code back to the action register after processes the request. The kernel driver polls waiting for this update and then proceeds. See intel_guc_send()

Doorbells: Doorbells are interrupts to uKernel. A doorbell is a single cache line (QW) mapped into process space.

Work Items: There are several types of work items that the host may place into a workqueue, each with its own requirements and limitations. Currently only WQ_TYPE_INORDER is needed to support legacy submission via GuC, which represents in-order queue. The kernel driver packs ring tail pointer and an ELSP context descriptor dword into Work Item. See guc_add_request()

void guc_submit(struct intel_engine_cs * engine)

Submit commands through GuC

Parameters

struct intel_engine_cs * engine
engine associated with the commands

Description

The only error here arises if the doorbell hardware isn’t functioning as expected, which really shouln’t happen.

struct intel_guc_client * guc_client_alloc(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, u32 engines, u32 priority, struct i915_gem_context * ctx)

Allocate an intel_guc_client

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
driver private data structure
u32 engines
The set of engines to enable for this client
u32 priority
four levels priority _CRITICAL, _HIGH, _NORMAL and _LOW The kernel client to replace ExecList submission is created with NORMAL priority. Priority of a client for scheduler can be HIGH, while a preemption context can use CRITICAL.
struct i915_gem_context * ctx
the context that owns the client (we use the default render context)

Return

An intel_guc_client object if success, else NULL.

GuC Firmware Layout

The GuC firmware layout looks like this:

uc_css_header

contains major/minor version

uCode
RSA signature
modulus key
exponent val

The firmware may or may not have modulus key and exponent data. The header, uCode and RSA signature are must-have components that will be used by driver. Length of each components, which is all in dwords, can be found in header. In the case that modulus and exponent are not present in fw, a.k.a truncated image, the length value still appears in header.

Driver will do some basic fw size validation based on the following rules:

  1. Header, uCode and RSA are must-have components.
  2. All firmware components, if they present, are in the sequence illustrated in the layout table above.
  3. Length info of each component can be found in header, in dwords.
  4. Modulus and exponent key are not required by driver. They may not appear in fw. So driver will load a truncated firmware in this case.

HuC firmware layout is same as GuC firmware.

HuC firmware css header is different. However, the only difference is where the version information is saved. The uc_css_header is unified to support both. Driver should get HuC version from uc_css_header.huc_sw_version, while uc_css_header.guc_sw_version for GuC.

GuC Address Space

The layout of GuC address space is shown below:

   +===========> +====================+ <== FFFF_FFFF
   ^             |      Reserved      |
   |             +====================+ <== GUC_GGTT_TOP
   |             |                    |
   |             |        DRAM        |
  GuC            |                    |
Address    +===> +====================+ <== GuC ggtt_pin_bias
 Space     ^     |                    |
   |       |     |                    |
   |      GuC    |        GuC         |
   |     WOPCM   |       WOPCM        |
   |      Size   |                    |
   |       |     |                    |
   v       v     |                    |
   +=======+===> +====================+ <== 0000_0000

The lower part of GuC Address Space [0, ggtt_pin_bias) is mapped to GuC WOPCM while upper part of GuC Address Space [ggtt_pin_bias, GUC_GGTT_TOP) is mapped to DRAM. The value of the GuC ggtt_pin_bias is the GuC WOPCM size.

Tracing

This sections covers all things related to the tracepoints implemented in the i915 driver.

i915_ppgtt_create and i915_ppgtt_release

With full ppgtt enabled each process using drm will allocate at least one translation table. With these traces it is possible to keep track of the allocation and of the lifetime of the tables; this can be used during testing/debug to verify that we are not leaking ppgtts. These traces identify the ppgtt through the vm pointer, which is also printed by the i915_vma_bind and i915_vma_unbind tracepoints.

i915_context_create and i915_context_free

These tracepoints are used to track creation and deletion of contexts. If full ppgtt is enabled, they also print the address of the vm assigned to the context.

switch_mm

Perf

Overview

Gen graphics supports a large number of performance counters that can help driver and application developers understand and optimize their use of the GPU.

This i915 perf interface enables userspace to configure and open a file descriptor representing a stream of GPU metrics which can then be read() as a stream of sample records.

The interface is particularly suited to exposing buffered metrics that are captured by DMA from the GPU, unsynchronized with and unrelated to the CPU.

Streams representing a single context are accessible to applications with a corresponding drm file descriptor, such that OpenGL can use the interface without special privileges. Access to system-wide metrics requires root privileges by default, unless changed via the dev.i915.perf_event_paranoid sysctl option.

Comparison with Core Perf

The interface was initially inspired by the core Perf infrastructure but some notable differences are:

i915 perf file descriptors represent a “stream” instead of an “event”; where a perf event primarily corresponds to a single 64bit value, while a stream might sample sets of tightly-coupled counters, depending on the configuration. For example the Gen OA unit isn’t designed to support orthogonal configurations of individual counters; it’s configured for a set of related counters. Samples for an i915 perf stream capturing OA metrics will include a set of counter values packed in a compact HW specific format. The OA unit supports a number of different packing formats which can be selected by the user opening the stream. Perf has support for grouping events, but each event in the group is configured, validated and authenticated individually with separate system calls.

i915 perf stream configurations are provided as an array of u64 (key,value) pairs, instead of a fixed struct with multiple miscellaneous config members, interleaved with event-type specific members.

i915 perf doesn’t support exposing metrics via an mmap’d circular buffer. The supported metrics are being written to memory by the GPU unsynchronized with the CPU, using HW specific packing formats for counter sets. Sometimes the constraints on HW configuration require reports to be filtered before it would be acceptable to expose them to unprivileged applications - to hide the metrics of other processes/contexts. For these use cases a read() based interface is a good fit, and provides an opportunity to filter data as it gets copied from the GPU mapped buffers to userspace buffers.

Issues hit with first prototype based on Core Perf

The first prototype of this driver was based on the core perf infrastructure, and while we did make that mostly work, with some changes to perf, we found we were breaking or working around too many assumptions baked into perf’s currently cpu centric design.

In the end we didn’t see a clear benefit to making perf’s implementation and interface more complex by changing design assumptions while we knew we still wouldn’t be able to use any existing perf based userspace tools.

Also considering the Gen specific nature of the Observability hardware and how userspace will sometimes need to combine i915 perf OA metrics with side-band OA data captured via MI_REPORT_PERF_COUNT commands; we’re expecting the interface to be used by a platform specific userspace such as OpenGL or tools. This is to say; we aren’t inherently missing out on having a standard vendor/architecture agnostic interface by not using perf.

For posterity, in case we might re-visit trying to adapt core perf to be better suited to exposing i915 metrics these were the main pain points we hit:

  • The perf based OA PMU driver broke some significant design assumptions:

    Existing perf pmus are used for profiling work on a cpu and we were introducing the idea of _IS_DEVICE pmus with different security implications, the need to fake cpu-related data (such as user/kernel registers) to fit with perf’s current design, and adding _DEVICE records as a way to forward device-specific status records.

    The OA unit writes reports of counters into a circular buffer, without involvement from the CPU, making our PMU driver the first of a kind.

    Given the way we were periodically forward data from the GPU-mapped, OA buffer to perf’s buffer, those bursts of sample writes looked to perf like we were sampling too fast and so we had to subvert its throttling checks.

    Perf supports groups of counters and allows those to be read via transactions internally but transactions currently seem designed to be explicitly initiated from the cpu (say in response to a userspace read()) and while we could pull a report out of the OA buffer we can’t trigger a report from the cpu on demand.

    Related to being report based; the OA counters are configured in HW as a set while perf generally expects counter configurations to be orthogonal. Although counters can be associated with a group leader as they are opened, there’s no clear precedent for being able to provide group-wide configuration attributes (for example we want to let userspace choose the OA unit report format used to capture all counters in a set, or specify a GPU context to filter metrics on). We avoided using perf’s grouping feature and forwarded OA reports to userspace via perf’s ‘raw’ sample field. This suited our userspace well considering how coupled the counters are when dealing with normalizing. It would be inconvenient to split counters up into separate events, only to require userspace to recombine them. For Mesa it’s also convenient to be forwarded raw, periodic reports for combining with the side-band raw reports it captures using MI_REPORT_PERF_COUNT commands.

    • As a side note on perf’s grouping feature; there was also some concern that using PERF_FORMAT_GROUP as a way to pack together counter values would quite drastically inflate our sample sizes, which would likely lower the effective sampling resolutions we could use when the available memory bandwidth is limited.

      With the OA unit’s report formats, counters are packed together as 32 or 40bit values, with the largest report size being 256 bytes.

      PERF_FORMAT_GROUP values are 64bit, but there doesn’t appear to be a documented ordering to the values, implying PERF_FORMAT_ID must also be used to add a 64bit ID before each value; giving 16 bytes per counter.

    Related to counter orthogonality; we can’t time share the OA unit, while event scheduling is a central design idea within perf for allowing userspace to open + enable more events than can be configured in HW at any one time. The OA unit is not designed to allow re-configuration while in use. We can’t reconfigure the OA unit without losing internal OA unit state which we can’t access explicitly to save and restore. Reconfiguring the OA unit is also relatively slow, involving ~100 register writes. From userspace Mesa also depends on a stable OA configuration when emitting MI_REPORT_PERF_COUNT commands and importantly the OA unit can’t be disabled while there are outstanding MI_RPC commands lest we hang the command streamer.

    The contents of sample records aren’t extensible by device drivers (i.e. the sample_type bits). As an example; Sourab Gupta had been looking to attach GPU timestamps to our OA samples. We were shoehorning OA reports into sample records by using the ‘raw’ field, but it’s tricky to pack more than one thing into this field because events/core.c currently only lets a pmu give a single raw data pointer plus len which will be copied into the ring buffer. To include more than the OA report we’d have to copy the report into an intermediate larger buffer. I’d been considering allowing a vector of data+len values to be specified for copying the raw data, but it felt like a kludge to being using the raw field for this purpose.

  • It felt like our perf based PMU was making some technical compromises just for the sake of using perf:

    perf_event_open() requires events to either relate to a pid or a specific cpu core, while our device pmu related to neither. Events opened with a pid will be automatically enabled/disabled according to the scheduling of that process - so not appropriate for us. When an event is related to a cpu id, perf ensures pmu methods will be invoked via an inter process interrupt on that core. To avoid invasive changes our userspace opened OA perf events for a specific cpu. This was workable but it meant the majority of the OA driver ran in atomic context, including all OA report forwarding, which wasn’t really necessary in our case and seems to make our locking requirements somewhat complex as we handled the interaction with the rest of the i915 driver.

i915 Driver Entry Points

This section covers the entrypoints exported outside of i915_perf.c to integrate with drm/i915 and to handle the DRM_I915_PERF_OPEN ioctl.

void i915_perf_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initialize i915-perf state on module load

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Initializes i915-perf state without exposing anything to userspace.

Note

i915-perf initialization is split into an ‘init’ and ‘register’ phase with the i915_perf_register() exposing state to userspace.

void i915_perf_fini(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Counter part to i915_perf_init()

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
void i915_perf_register(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

exposes i915-perf to userspace

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

In particular OA metric sets are advertised under a sysfs metrics/ directory allowing userspace to enumerate valid IDs that can be used to open an i915-perf stream.

void i915_perf_unregister(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

hide i915-perf from userspace

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

i915-perf state cleanup is split up into an ‘unregister’ and ‘deinit’ phase where the interface is first hidden from userspace by i915_perf_unregister() before cleaning up remaining state in i915_perf_fini().

int i915_perf_open_ioctl(struct drm_device * dev, void * data, struct drm_file * file)

DRM ioctl() for userspace to open a stream FD

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
drm device
void * data
ioctl data copied from userspace (unvalidated)
struct drm_file * file
drm file

Description

Validates the stream open parameters given by userspace including flags and an array of u64 key, value pair properties.

Very little is assumed up front about the nature of the stream being opened (for instance we don’t assume it’s for periodic OA unit metrics). An i915-perf stream is expected to be a suitable interface for other forms of buffered data written by the GPU besides periodic OA metrics.

Note we copy the properties from userspace outside of the i915 perf mutex to avoid an awkward lockdep with mmap_sem.

Most of the implementation details are handled by i915_perf_open_ioctl_locked() after taking the drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex for serializing with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

Return

A newly opened i915 Perf stream file descriptor or negative error code on failure.

int i915_perf_release(struct inode * inode, struct file * file)

handles userspace close() of a stream file

Parameters

struct inode * inode
anonymous inode associated with file
struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file

Description

Cleans up any resources associated with an open i915 perf stream file.

NB: close() can’t really fail from the userspace point of view.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code.

int i915_perf_add_config_ioctl(struct drm_device * dev, void * data, struct drm_file * file)

DRM ioctl() for userspace to add a new OA config

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
drm device
void * data
ioctl data (pointer to struct drm_i915_perf_oa_config) copied from userspace (unvalidated)
struct drm_file * file
drm file

Description

Validates the submitted OA register to be saved into a new OA config that can then be used for programming the OA unit and its NOA network.

Return

A new allocated config number to be used with the perf open ioctl or a negative error code on failure.

int i915_perf_remove_config_ioctl(struct drm_device * dev, void * data, struct drm_file * file)

DRM ioctl() for userspace to remove an OA config

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
drm device
void * data
ioctl data (pointer to u64 integer) copied from userspace
struct drm_file * file
drm file

Description

Configs can be removed while being used, the will stop appearing in sysfs and their content will be freed when the stream using the config is closed.

Return

0 on success or a negative error code on failure.

i915 Perf Stream

This section covers the stream-semantics-agnostic structures and functions for representing an i915 perf stream FD and associated file operations.

struct i915_perf_stream

state for a single open stream FD

Definition

struct i915_perf_stream {
  struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv;
  struct list_head link;
  u32 sample_flags;
  int sample_size;
  struct i915_gem_context *ctx;
  bool enabled;
  const struct i915_perf_stream_ops *ops;
  struct i915_oa_config *oa_config;
};

Members

dev_priv
i915 drm device
link
Links the stream into :c:type:`drm_i915_private->streams <drm_i915_private>`
sample_flags
Flags representing the DRM_I915_PERF_PROP_SAMPLE_* properties given when opening a stream, representing the contents of a single sample as read() by userspace.
sample_size
Considering the configured contents of a sample combined with the required header size, this is the total size of a single sample record.
ctx
NULL if measuring system-wide across all contexts or a specific context that is being monitored.
enabled
Whether the stream is currently enabled, considering whether the stream was opened in a disabled state and based on I915_PERF_IOCTL_ENABLE and I915_PERF_IOCTL_DISABLE calls.
ops
The callbacks providing the implementation of this specific type of configured stream.
oa_config
The OA configuration used by the stream.
struct i915_perf_stream_ops

the OPs to support a specific stream type

Definition

struct i915_perf_stream_ops {
  void (*enable)(struct i915_perf_stream *stream);
  void (*disable)(struct i915_perf_stream *stream);
  void (*poll_wait)(struct i915_perf_stream *stream,struct file *file, poll_table *wait);
  int (*wait_unlocked)(struct i915_perf_stream *stream);
  int (*read)(struct i915_perf_stream *stream,char __user *buf,size_t count, size_t *offset);
  void (*destroy)(struct i915_perf_stream *stream);
};

Members

enable
Enables the collection of HW samples, either in response to I915_PERF_IOCTL_ENABLE or implicitly called when stream is opened without I915_PERF_FLAG_DISABLED.
disable
Disables the collection of HW samples, either in response to I915_PERF_IOCTL_DISABLE or implicitly called before destroying the stream.
poll_wait
Call poll_wait, passing a wait queue that will be woken once there is something ready to read() for the stream
wait_unlocked
For handling a blocking read, wait until there is something to ready to read() for the stream. E.g. wait on the same wait queue that would be passed to poll_wait().
read

Copy buffered metrics as records to userspace buf: the userspace, destination buffer count: the number of bytes to copy, requested by userspace offset: zero at the start of the read, updated as the read proceeds, it represents how many bytes have been copied so far and the buffer offset for copying the next record.

Copy as many buffered i915 perf samples and records for this stream to userspace as will fit in the given buffer.

Only write complete records; returning -ENOSPC if there isn’t room for a complete record.

Return any error condition that results in a short read such as -ENOSPC or -EFAULT, even though these may be squashed before returning to userspace.

destroy

Cleanup any stream specific resources.

The stream will always be disabled before this is called.

int read_properties_unlocked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, u64 __user * uprops, u32 n_props, struct perf_open_properties * props)

validate + copy userspace stream open properties

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
u64 __user * uprops
The array of u64 key value pairs given by userspace
u32 n_props
The number of key value pairs expected in uprops
struct perf_open_properties * props
The stream configuration built up while validating properties

Description

Note this function only validates properties in isolation it doesn’t validate that the combination of properties makes sense or that all properties necessary for a particular kind of stream have been set.

Note that there currently aren’t any ordering requirements for properties so we shouldn’t validate or assume anything about ordering here. This doesn’t rule out defining new properties with ordering requirements in the future.

int i915_perf_open_ioctl_locked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, struct drm_i915_perf_open_param * param, struct perf_open_properties * props, struct drm_file * file)

DRM ioctl() for userspace to open a stream FD

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
struct drm_i915_perf_open_param * param
The open parameters passed to ‘DRM_I915_PERF_OPEN`
struct perf_open_properties * props
individually validated u64 property value pairs
struct drm_file * file
drm file

Description

See i915_perf_ioctl_open() for interface details.

Implements further stream config validation and stream initialization on behalf of i915_perf_open_ioctl() with the drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex taken to serialize with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

Note

at this point the props have only been validated in isolation and it’s still necessary to validate that the combination of properties makes sense.

In the case where userspace is interested in OA unit metrics then further config validation and stream initialization details will be handled by i915_oa_stream_init(). The code here should only validate config state that will be relevant to all stream types / backends.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code.

void i915_perf_destroy_locked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

destroy an i915 perf stream

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream

Description

Frees all resources associated with the given i915 perf stream, disabling any associated data capture in the process.

Note

The drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex has been taken to serialize with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

ssize_t i915_perf_read(struct file * file, char __user * buf, size_t count, loff_t * ppos)

handles read() FOP for i915 perf stream FDs

Parameters

struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
loff_t * ppos
(inout) file seek position (unused)

Description

The entry point for handling a read() on a stream file descriptor from userspace. Most of the work is left to the i915_perf_read_locked() and i915_perf_stream_ops->read but to save having stream implementations (of which we might have multiple later) we handle blocking read here.

We can also consistently treat trying to read from a disabled stream as an IO error so implementations can assume the stream is enabled while reading.

Return

The number of bytes copied or a negative error code on failure.

long i915_perf_ioctl(struct file * file, unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg)

support ioctl() usage with i915 perf stream FDs

Parameters

struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
unsigned int cmd
the ioctl request
unsigned long arg
the ioctl data

Description

Implementation deferred to i915_perf_ioctl_locked().

Return

zero on success or a negative error code. Returns -EINVAL for an unknown ioctl request.

void i915_perf_enable_locked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handle I915_PERF_IOCTL_ENABLE ioctl

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
A disabled i915 perf stream

Description

[Re]enables the associated capture of data for this stream.

If a stream was previously enabled then there’s currently no intention to provide userspace any guarantee about the preservation of previously buffered data.

void i915_perf_disable_locked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handle I915_PERF_IOCTL_DISABLE ioctl

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An enabled i915 perf stream

Description

Disables the associated capture of data for this stream.

The intention is that disabling an re-enabling a stream will ideally be cheaper than destroying and re-opening a stream with the same configuration, though there are no formal guarantees about what state or buffered data must be retained between disabling and re-enabling a stream.

Note

while a stream is disabled it’s considered an error for userspace to attempt to read from the stream (-EIO).

__poll_t i915_perf_poll(struct file * file, poll_table * wait)

call poll_wait() with a suitable wait queue for stream

Parameters

struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
poll_table * wait
poll() state table

Description

For handling userspace polling on an i915 perf stream, this ensures poll_wait() gets called with a wait queue that will be woken for new stream data.

Note

Implementation deferred to i915_perf_poll_locked()

Return

any poll events that are ready without sleeping

__poll_t i915_perf_poll_locked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, struct i915_perf_stream * stream, struct file * file, poll_table * wait)

poll_wait() with a suitable wait queue for stream

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream
struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
poll_table * wait
poll() state table

Description

For handling userspace polling on an i915 perf stream, this calls through to i915_perf_stream_ops->poll_wait to call poll_wait() with a wait queue that will be woken for new stream data.

Note

The drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex has been taken to serialize with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

Return

any poll events that are ready without sleeping

i915 Perf Observation Architecture Stream

struct i915_oa_ops

Gen specific implementation of an OA unit stream

Definition

struct i915_oa_ops {
  bool (*is_valid_b_counter_reg)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv, u32 addr);
  bool (*is_valid_mux_reg)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv, u32 addr);
  bool (*is_valid_flex_reg)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv, u32 addr);
  void (*init_oa_buffer)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv);
  int (*enable_metric_set)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv, const struct i915_oa_config *oa_config);
  void (*disable_metric_set)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv);
  void (*oa_enable)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv);
  void (*oa_disable)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv);
  int (*read)(struct i915_perf_stream *stream,char __user *buf,size_t count, size_t *offset);
  u32 (*oa_hw_tail_read)(struct drm_i915_private *dev_priv);
};

Members

is_valid_b_counter_reg
Validates register’s address for programming boolean counters for a particular platform.
is_valid_mux_reg
Validates register’s address for programming mux for a particular platform.
is_valid_flex_reg
Validates register’s address for programming flex EU filtering for a particular platform.
init_oa_buffer

Resets the head and tail pointers of the circular buffer for periodic OA reports.

Called when first opening a stream for OA metrics, but also may be called in response to an OA buffer overflow or other error condition.

Note it may be necessary to clear the full OA buffer here as part of maintaining the invariable that new reports must be written to zeroed memory for us to be able to reliable detect if an expected report has not yet landed in memory. (At least on Haswell the OA buffer tail pointer is not synchronized with reports being visible to the CPU)

enable_metric_set
Selects and applies any MUX configuration to set up the Boolean and Custom (B/C) counters that are part of the counter reports being sampled. May apply system constraints such as disabling EU clock gating as required.
disable_metric_set
Remove system constraints associated with using the OA unit.
oa_enable
Enable periodic sampling
oa_disable
Disable periodic sampling
read
Copy data from the circular OA buffer into a given userspace buffer.
oa_hw_tail_read

read the OA tail pointer register

In particular this enables us to share all the fiddly code for handling the OA unit tail pointer race that affects multiple generations.

int i915_oa_stream_init(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, struct drm_i915_perf_open_param * param, struct perf_open_properties * props)

validate combined props for OA stream and init

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream
struct drm_i915_perf_open_param * param
The open parameters passed to DRM_I915_PERF_OPEN
struct perf_open_properties * props
The property state that configures stream (individually validated)

Description

While read_properties_unlocked() validates properties in isolation it doesn’t ensure that the combination necessarily makes sense.

At this point it has been determined that userspace wants a stream of OA metrics, but still we need to further validate the combined properties are OK.

If the configuration makes sense then we can allocate memory for a circular OA buffer and apply the requested metric set configuration.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code.

int i915_oa_read(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, char __user * buf, size_t count, size_t * offset)

just calls through to i915_oa_ops->read

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
size_t * offset
(inout): the current position for writing into buf

Description

Updates offset according to the number of bytes successfully copied into the userspace buffer.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code

void i915_oa_stream_enable(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handle I915_PERF_IOCTL_ENABLE for OA stream

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream opened for OA metrics

Description

[Re]enables hardware periodic sampling according to the period configured when opening the stream. This also starts a hrtimer that will periodically check for data in the circular OA buffer for notifying userspace (e.g. during a read() or poll()).

void i915_oa_stream_disable(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handle I915_PERF_IOCTL_DISABLE for OA stream

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream opened for OA metrics

Description

Stops the OA unit from periodically writing counter reports into the circular OA buffer. This also stops the hrtimer that periodically checks for data in the circular OA buffer, for notifying userspace.

int i915_oa_wait_unlocked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handles blocking IO until OA data available

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics

Description

Called when userspace tries to read() from a blocking stream FD opened for OA metrics. It waits until the hrtimer callback finds a non-empty OA buffer and wakes us.

Note

it’s acceptable to have this return with some false positives since any subsequent read handling will return -EAGAIN if there isn’t really data ready for userspace yet.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code

void i915_oa_poll_wait(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, struct file * file, poll_table * wait)

call poll_wait() for an OA stream poll()

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
poll_table * wait
poll() state table

Description

For handling userspace polling on an i915 perf stream opened for OA metrics, this starts a poll_wait with the wait queue that our hrtimer callback wakes when it sees data ready to read in the circular OA buffer.

All i915 Perf Internals

This section simply includes all currently documented i915 perf internals, in no particular order, but may include some more minor utilities or platform specific details than found in the more high-level sections.

struct perf_open_properties

for validated properties given to open a stream

Definition

struct perf_open_properties {
  u32 sample_flags;
  u64 single_context:1;
  u64 ctx_handle;
  int metrics_set;
  int oa_format;
  bool oa_periodic;
  int oa_period_exponent;
};

Members

sample_flags
DRM_I915_PERF_PROP_SAMPLE_* properties are tracked as flags
single_context
Whether a single or all gpu contexts should be monitored
ctx_handle
A gem ctx handle for use with single_context
metrics_set
An ID for an OA unit metric set advertised via sysfs
oa_format
An OA unit HW report format
oa_periodic
Whether to enable periodic OA unit sampling
oa_period_exponent
The OA unit sampling period is derived from this

Description

As read_properties_unlocked() enumerates and validates the properties given to open a stream of metrics the configuration is built up in the structure which starts out zero initialized.

bool oa_buffer_check_unlocked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

check for data and update tail ptr state

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

This is either called via fops (for blocking reads in user ctx) or the poll check hrtimer (atomic ctx) to check the OA buffer tail pointer and check if there is data available for userspace to read.

This function is central to providing a workaround for the OA unit tail pointer having a race with respect to what data is visible to the CPU. It is responsible for reading tail pointers from the hardware and giving the pointers time to ‘age’ before they are made available for reading. (See description of OA_TAIL_MARGIN_NSEC above for further details.)

Besides returning true when there is data available to read() this function also has the side effect of updating the oa_buffer.tails[], .aging_timestamp and .aged_tail_idx state used for reading.

Note

It’s safe to read OA config state here unlocked, assuming that this is only called while the stream is enabled, while the global OA configuration can’t be modified.

Return

true if the OA buffer contains data, else false

int append_oa_status(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, char __user * buf, size_t count, size_t * offset, enum drm_i915_perf_record_type type)

Appends a status record to a userspace read() buffer.

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
size_t * offset
(inout): the current position for writing into buf
enum drm_i915_perf_record_type type
The kind of status to report to userspace

Description

Writes a status record (such as DRM_I915_PERF_RECORD_OA_REPORT_LOST) into the userspace read() buffer.

The buf offset will only be updated on success.

Return

0 on success, negative error code on failure.

int append_oa_sample(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, char __user * buf, size_t count, size_t * offset, const u8 * report)

Copies single OA report into userspace read() buffer.

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
size_t * offset
(inout): the current position for writing into buf
const u8 * report
A single OA report to (optionally) include as part of the sample

Description

The contents of a sample are configured through DRM_I915_PERF_PROP_SAMPLE_* properties when opening a stream, tracked as stream->sample_flags. This function copies the requested components of a single sample to the given read() buf.

The buf offset will only be updated on success.

Return

0 on success, negative error code on failure.

int gen8_append_oa_reports(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, char __user * buf, size_t count, size_t * offset)

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
size_t * offset
(inout): the current position for writing into buf

Description

Notably any error condition resulting in a short read (-ENOSPC or -EFAULT) will be returned even though one or more records may have been successfully copied. In this case it’s up to the caller to decide if the error should be squashed before returning to userspace.

Note

reports are consumed from the head, and appended to the tail, so the tail chases the head?... If you think that’s mad and back-to-front you’re not alone, but this follows the Gen PRM naming convention.

Return

0 on success, negative error code on failure.

int gen8_oa_read(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, char __user * buf, size_t count, size_t * offset)

copy status records then buffered OA reports

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
size_t * offset
(inout): the current position for writing into buf

Description

Checks OA unit status registers and if necessary appends corresponding status records for userspace (such as for a buffer full condition) and then initiate appending any buffered OA reports.

Updates offset according to the number of bytes successfully copied into the userspace buffer.

NB: some data may be successfully copied to the userspace buffer even if an error is returned, and this is reflected in the updated offset.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code

int gen7_append_oa_reports(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, char __user * buf, size_t count, size_t * offset)

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
size_t * offset
(inout): the current position for writing into buf

Description

Notably any error condition resulting in a short read (-ENOSPC or -EFAULT) will be returned even though one or more records may have been successfully copied. In this case it’s up to the caller to decide if the error should be squashed before returning to userspace.

Note

reports are consumed from the head, and appended to the tail, so the tail chases the head?... If you think that’s mad and back-to-front you’re not alone, but this follows the Gen PRM naming convention.

Return

0 on success, negative error code on failure.

int gen7_oa_read(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, char __user * buf, size_t count, size_t * offset)

copy status records then buffered OA reports

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
size_t * offset
(inout): the current position for writing into buf

Description

Checks Gen 7 specific OA unit status registers and if necessary appends corresponding status records for userspace (such as for a buffer full condition) and then initiate appending any buffered OA reports.

Updates offset according to the number of bytes successfully copied into the userspace buffer.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code

int i915_oa_wait_unlocked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handles blocking IO until OA data available

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics

Description

Called when userspace tries to read() from a blocking stream FD opened for OA metrics. It waits until the hrtimer callback finds a non-empty OA buffer and wakes us.

Note

it’s acceptable to have this return with some false positives since any subsequent read handling will return -EAGAIN if there isn’t really data ready for userspace yet.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code

void i915_oa_poll_wait(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, struct file * file, poll_table * wait)

call poll_wait() for an OA stream poll()

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
poll_table * wait
poll() state table

Description

For handling userspace polling on an i915 perf stream opened for OA metrics, this starts a poll_wait with the wait queue that our hrtimer callback wakes when it sees data ready to read in the circular OA buffer.

int i915_oa_read(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, char __user * buf, size_t count, size_t * offset)

just calls through to i915_oa_ops->read

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
size_t * offset
(inout): the current position for writing into buf

Description

Updates offset according to the number of bytes successfully copied into the userspace buffer.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code

int oa_get_render_ctx_id(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

determine and hold ctx hw id

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics

Description

Determine the render context hw id, and ensure it remains fixed for the lifetime of the stream. This ensures that we don’t have to worry about updating the context ID in OACONTROL on the fly.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code

void oa_put_render_ctx_id(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

counterpart to oa_get_render_ctx_id releases hold

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915-perf stream opened for OA metrics

Description

In case anything needed doing to ensure the context HW ID would remain valid for the lifetime of the stream, then that can be undone here.

void i915_oa_stream_enable(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handle I915_PERF_IOCTL_ENABLE for OA stream

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream opened for OA metrics

Description

[Re]enables hardware periodic sampling according to the period configured when opening the stream. This also starts a hrtimer that will periodically check for data in the circular OA buffer for notifying userspace (e.g. during a read() or poll()).

void i915_oa_stream_disable(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handle I915_PERF_IOCTL_DISABLE for OA stream

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream opened for OA metrics

Description

Stops the OA unit from periodically writing counter reports into the circular OA buffer. This also stops the hrtimer that periodically checks for data in the circular OA buffer, for notifying userspace.

int i915_oa_stream_init(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, struct drm_i915_perf_open_param * param, struct perf_open_properties * props)

validate combined props for OA stream and init

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream
struct drm_i915_perf_open_param * param
The open parameters passed to DRM_I915_PERF_OPEN
struct perf_open_properties * props
The property state that configures stream (individually validated)

Description

While read_properties_unlocked() validates properties in isolation it doesn’t ensure that the combination necessarily makes sense.

At this point it has been determined that userspace wants a stream of OA metrics, but still we need to further validate the combined properties are OK.

If the configuration makes sense then we can allocate memory for a circular OA buffer and apply the requested metric set configuration.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code.

ssize_t i915_perf_read_locked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, struct file * file, char __user * buf, size_t count, loff_t * ppos)

i915_perf_stream_ops->read with error normalisation

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream
struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
loff_t * ppos
(inout) file seek position (unused)

Description

Besides wrapping i915_perf_stream_ops->read this provides a common place to ensure that if we’ve successfully copied any data then reporting that takes precedence over any internal error status, so the data isn’t lost.

For example ret will be -ENOSPC whenever there is more buffered data than can be copied to userspace, but that’s only interesting if we weren’t able to copy some data because it implies the userspace buffer is too small to receive a single record (and we never split records).

Another case with ret == -EFAULT is more of a grey area since it would seem like bad form for userspace to ask us to overrun its buffer, but the user knows best:

Return

The number of bytes copied or a negative error code on failure.

ssize_t i915_perf_read(struct file * file, char __user * buf, size_t count, loff_t * ppos)

handles read() FOP for i915 perf stream FDs

Parameters

struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
char __user * buf
destination buffer given by userspace
size_t count
the number of bytes userspace wants to read
loff_t * ppos
(inout) file seek position (unused)

Description

The entry point for handling a read() on a stream file descriptor from userspace. Most of the work is left to the i915_perf_read_locked() and i915_perf_stream_ops->read but to save having stream implementations (of which we might have multiple later) we handle blocking read here.

We can also consistently treat trying to read from a disabled stream as an IO error so implementations can assume the stream is enabled while reading.

Return

The number of bytes copied or a negative error code on failure.

__poll_t i915_perf_poll_locked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, struct i915_perf_stream * stream, struct file * file, poll_table * wait)

poll_wait() with a suitable wait queue for stream

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream
struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
poll_table * wait
poll() state table

Description

For handling userspace polling on an i915 perf stream, this calls through to i915_perf_stream_ops->poll_wait to call poll_wait() with a wait queue that will be woken for new stream data.

Note

The drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex has been taken to serialize with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

Return

any poll events that are ready without sleeping

__poll_t i915_perf_poll(struct file * file, poll_table * wait)

call poll_wait() with a suitable wait queue for stream

Parameters

struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
poll_table * wait
poll() state table

Description

For handling userspace polling on an i915 perf stream, this ensures poll_wait() gets called with a wait queue that will be woken for new stream data.

Note

Implementation deferred to i915_perf_poll_locked()

Return

any poll events that are ready without sleeping

void i915_perf_enable_locked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handle I915_PERF_IOCTL_ENABLE ioctl

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
A disabled i915 perf stream

Description

[Re]enables the associated capture of data for this stream.

If a stream was previously enabled then there’s currently no intention to provide userspace any guarantee about the preservation of previously buffered data.

void i915_perf_disable_locked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

handle I915_PERF_IOCTL_DISABLE ioctl

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An enabled i915 perf stream

Description

Disables the associated capture of data for this stream.

The intention is that disabling an re-enabling a stream will ideally be cheaper than destroying and re-opening a stream with the same configuration, though there are no formal guarantees about what state or buffered data must be retained between disabling and re-enabling a stream.

Note

while a stream is disabled it’s considered an error for userspace to attempt to read from the stream (-EIO).

long i915_perf_ioctl_locked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream, unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg)

support ioctl() usage with i915 perf stream FDs

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream
unsigned int cmd
the ioctl request
unsigned long arg
the ioctl data

Note

The drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex has been taken to serialize with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code. Returns -EINVAL for an unknown ioctl request.

long i915_perf_ioctl(struct file * file, unsigned int cmd, unsigned long arg)

support ioctl() usage with i915 perf stream FDs

Parameters

struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file
unsigned int cmd
the ioctl request
unsigned long arg
the ioctl data

Description

Implementation deferred to i915_perf_ioctl_locked().

Return

zero on success or a negative error code. Returns -EINVAL for an unknown ioctl request.

void i915_perf_destroy_locked(struct i915_perf_stream * stream)

destroy an i915 perf stream

Parameters

struct i915_perf_stream * stream
An i915 perf stream

Description

Frees all resources associated with the given i915 perf stream, disabling any associated data capture in the process.

Note

The drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex has been taken to serialize with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

int i915_perf_release(struct inode * inode, struct file * file)

handles userspace close() of a stream file

Parameters

struct inode * inode
anonymous inode associated with file
struct file * file
An i915 perf stream file

Description

Cleans up any resources associated with an open i915 perf stream file.

NB: close() can’t really fail from the userspace point of view.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code.

int i915_perf_open_ioctl_locked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, struct drm_i915_perf_open_param * param, struct perf_open_properties * props, struct drm_file * file)

DRM ioctl() for userspace to open a stream FD

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
struct drm_i915_perf_open_param * param
The open parameters passed to ‘DRM_I915_PERF_OPEN`
struct perf_open_properties * props
individually validated u64 property value pairs
struct drm_file * file
drm file

Description

See i915_perf_ioctl_open() for interface details.

Implements further stream config validation and stream initialization on behalf of i915_perf_open_ioctl() with the drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex taken to serialize with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

Note

at this point the props have only been validated in isolation and it’s still necessary to validate that the combination of properties makes sense.

In the case where userspace is interested in OA unit metrics then further config validation and stream initialization details will be handled by i915_oa_stream_init(). The code here should only validate config state that will be relevant to all stream types / backends.

Return

zero on success or a negative error code.

int read_properties_unlocked(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv, u64 __user * uprops, u32 n_props, struct perf_open_properties * props)

validate + copy userspace stream open properties

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance
u64 __user * uprops
The array of u64 key value pairs given by userspace
u32 n_props
The number of key value pairs expected in uprops
struct perf_open_properties * props
The stream configuration built up while validating properties

Description

Note this function only validates properties in isolation it doesn’t validate that the combination of properties makes sense or that all properties necessary for a particular kind of stream have been set.

Note that there currently aren’t any ordering requirements for properties so we shouldn’t validate or assume anything about ordering here. This doesn’t rule out defining new properties with ordering requirements in the future.

int i915_perf_open_ioctl(struct drm_device * dev, void * data, struct drm_file * file)

DRM ioctl() for userspace to open a stream FD

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
drm device
void * data
ioctl data copied from userspace (unvalidated)
struct drm_file * file
drm file

Description

Validates the stream open parameters given by userspace including flags and an array of u64 key, value pair properties.

Very little is assumed up front about the nature of the stream being opened (for instance we don’t assume it’s for periodic OA unit metrics). An i915-perf stream is expected to be a suitable interface for other forms of buffered data written by the GPU besides periodic OA metrics.

Note we copy the properties from userspace outside of the i915 perf mutex to avoid an awkward lockdep with mmap_sem.

Most of the implementation details are handled by i915_perf_open_ioctl_locked() after taking the drm_i915_private->perf.lock mutex for serializing with any non-file-operation driver hooks.

Return

A newly opened i915 Perf stream file descriptor or negative error code on failure.

void i915_perf_register(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

exposes i915-perf to userspace

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

In particular OA metric sets are advertised under a sysfs metrics/ directory allowing userspace to enumerate valid IDs that can be used to open an i915-perf stream.

void i915_perf_unregister(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

hide i915-perf from userspace

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

i915-perf state cleanup is split up into an ‘unregister’ and ‘deinit’ phase where the interface is first hidden from userspace by i915_perf_unregister() before cleaning up remaining state in i915_perf_fini().

int i915_perf_add_config_ioctl(struct drm_device * dev, void * data, struct drm_file * file)

DRM ioctl() for userspace to add a new OA config

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
drm device
void * data
ioctl data (pointer to struct drm_i915_perf_oa_config) copied from userspace (unvalidated)
struct drm_file * file
drm file

Description

Validates the submitted OA register to be saved into a new OA config that can then be used for programming the OA unit and its NOA network.

Return

A new allocated config number to be used with the perf open ioctl or a negative error code on failure.

int i915_perf_remove_config_ioctl(struct drm_device * dev, void * data, struct drm_file * file)

DRM ioctl() for userspace to remove an OA config

Parameters

struct drm_device * dev
drm device
void * data
ioctl data (pointer to u64 integer) copied from userspace
struct drm_file * file
drm file

Description

Configs can be removed while being used, the will stop appearing in sysfs and their content will be freed when the stream using the config is closed.

Return

0 on success or a negative error code on failure.

void i915_perf_init(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

initialize i915-perf state on module load

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Description

Initializes i915-perf state without exposing anything to userspace.

Note

i915-perf initialization is split into an ‘init’ and ‘register’ phase with the i915_perf_register() exposing state to userspace.

void i915_perf_fini(struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv)

Counter part to i915_perf_init()

Parameters

struct drm_i915_private * dev_priv
i915 device instance

Style

The drm/i915 driver codebase has some style rules in addition to (and, in some cases, deviating from) the kernel coding style.

Register macro definition style

The style guide for i915_reg.h.

Follow the style described here for new macros, and while changing existing macros. Do not mass change existing definitions just to update the style.

Layout

Keep helper macros near the top. For example, _PIPE() and friends.

Prefix macros that generally should not be used outside of this file with underscore ‘_’. For example, _PIPE() and friends, single instances of registers that are defined solely for the use by function-like macros.

Avoid using the underscore prefixed macros outside of this file. There are exceptions, but keep them to a minimum.

There are two basic types of register definitions: Single registers and register groups. Register groups are registers which have two or more instances, for example one per pipe, port, transcoder, etc. Register groups should be defined using function-like macros.

For single registers, define the register offset first, followed by register contents.

For register groups, define the register instance offsets first, prefixed with underscore, followed by a function-like macro choosing the right instance based on the parameter, followed by register contents.

Define the register contents (i.e. bit and bit field macros) from most significant to least significant bit. Indent the register content macros using two extra spaces between #define and the macro name.

For bit fields, define a _MASK and a _SHIFT macro. Define bit field contents so that they are already shifted in place, and can be directly OR’d. For convenience, function-like macros may be used to define bit fields, but do note that the macros may be needed to read as well as write the register contents.

Define bits using (1 << N) instead of BIT(N). We may change this in the future, but this is the prevailing style. Do not add _BIT suffix to the name.

Group the register and its contents together without blank lines, separate from other registers and their contents with one blank line.

Indent macro values from macro names using TABs. Align values vertically. Use braces in macro values as needed to avoid unintended precedence after macro substitution. Use spaces in macro values according to kernel coding style. Use lower case in hexadecimal values.

Naming

Try to name registers according to the specs. If the register name changes in the specs from platform to another, stick to the original name.

Try to re-use existing register macro definitions. Only add new macros for new register offsets, or when the register contents have changed enough to warrant a full redefinition.

When a register macro changes for a new platform, prefix the new macro using the platform acronym or generation. For example, SKL_ or GEN8_. The prefix signifies the start platform/generation using the register.

When a bit (field) macro changes or gets added for a new platform, while retaining the existing register macro, add a platform acronym or generation suffix to the name. For example, _SKL or _GEN8.

Examples

(Note that the values in the example are indented using spaces instead of TABs to avoid misalignment in generated documentation. Use TABs in the definitions.):

#define _FOO_A                      0xf000
#define _FOO_B                      0xf001
#define FOO(pipe)                   _MMIO_PIPE(pipe, _FOO_A, _FOO_B)
#define   FOO_ENABLE                (1 << 31)
#define   FOO_MODE_MASK             (0xf << 16)
#define   FOO_MODE_SHIFT            16
#define   FOO_MODE_BAR              (0 << 16)
#define   FOO_MODE_BAZ              (1 << 16)
#define   FOO_MODE_QUX_SNB          (2 << 16)

#define BAR                         _MMIO(0xb000)
#define GEN8_BAR                    _MMIO(0xb888)