xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/ntb_hw_intel.4 (revision 2008043f386721d58158e37e0d7e50df8095942d)
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26.Dd October 11, 2020
27.Dt NTB_HW_INTEL 4
28.Os
29.Sh NAME
30.Nm ntb_hw_intel
31.Nd Intel(R) Non-Transparent Bridge driver
32.Sh SYNOPSIS
33To compile this driver into your kernel,
34place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:
35.Bd -ragged -offset indent
36.Cd "device ntb"
37.Cd "device ntb_hw_intel"
38.Ed
39.Pp
40Or, to load the driver as a module at boot, place the following line in
41.Xr loader.conf 5 :
42.Bd -literal -offset indent
43ntb_hw_intel_load="YES"
44.Ed
45.Sh DESCRIPTION
46The
47.Nm ntb_hw_intel
48driver provides support for the Non-Transparent Bridge (NTB) hardware in
49Intel Xeon E3/E5 and S1200 processor families, which allow one of their PCIe
50ports to be switched from transparent to non-transparent bridge mode.
51In this mode the bridge looks not like a PCI bridge, but like a PCI endpoint
52device.
53The driver hides hardware details, exposing memory windows, scratchpads
54and doorbells of the other side via a hardware independent KPI to the
55.Xr ntb 4
56subsystem.
57.Pp
58The hardware provides 2 or 3 memory windows to the other system's memory,
5916 scratchpad registers and 14, 31 or 34 doorbells to interrupt the other
60system, depending on the platform.
61On Xeon processors one of the memory windows is typically consumed by the driver
62itself to work around multiple hardware errata.
63.Sh CONFIGURATION
64The NTB configuration should be set by BIOS.
65It includes enabling NTB, choosing between NTB-to-NTB (back-to-back) or
66NTB-to-Root Port mode,
67enabling split BAR mode (one of two 64-bit BARs can be split into two 32-bit
68ones) and configuring BAR sizes in bits (from 12 to 29/39) for both NTB sides.
69.Pp
70The recommended configuration is NTB-to-NTB mode, split bar enabled and
71all BAR sizes set to 20 (1 MiB).
72This needs to be done on both systems.
73Note, on Xeon SkyLake and newer platforms, split bar mode is not available.
74.Sh SEE ALSO
75.Xr if_ntb 4 ,
76.Xr ntb 4 ,
77.Xr ntb_transport 4
78.Sh AUTHORS
79.An -nosplit
80The
81.Nm
82driver was developed by Intel and originally written by
83.An Carl Delsey Aq Mt carl@FreeBSD.org .
84Later improvements were done by
85.An Conrad E. Meyer Aq Mt cem@FreeBSD.org
86and
87.An Alexander Motin Aq Mt mav@FreeBSD.org .
88.Sh BUGS
89NTB-to-Root Port mode is not yet supported, but it doesn't look very useful.
90.Pp
91On Xeon v2/v3/v4 processors split BAR mode should be enabled to allow
92SB01BASE_LOCKUP errata workaround to be applied by the driver.
93.Pp
94There is no way to protect your system from malicious behavior on the other
95system once the link is brought up.
96Anyone with root or kernel access on the other system can read or write to
97any location on your system.
98In other words, only connect two systems that completely trust each other.
99