xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/ntb_hw_intel.4 (revision 6be3386466ab79a84b48429ae66244f21526d3df)
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26.\" $FreeBSD$
27.\"
28.Dd October 11, 2020
29.Dt NTB_HW_INTEL 4
30.Os
31.Sh NAME
32.Nm ntb_hw_intel
33.Nd Intel(R) Non-Transparent Bridge driver
34.Sh SYNOPSIS
35To compile this driver into your kernel,
36place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:
37.Bd -ragged -offset indent
38.Cd "device ntb"
39.Cd "device ntb_hw_intel"
40.Ed
41.Pp
42Or, to load the driver as a module at boot, place the following line in
43.Xr loader.conf 5 :
44.Bd -literal -offset indent
45ntb_hw_intel_load="YES"
46.Ed
47.Sh DESCRIPTION
48The
49.Nm ntb_hw_intel
50driver provides support for the Non-Transparent Bridge (NTB) hardware in
51Intel Xeon E3/E5 and S1200 processor families, which allow one of their PCIe
52ports to be switched from transparent to non-transparent bridge mode.
53In this mode the bridge looks not like a PCI bridge, but like a PCI endpoint
54device.
55The driver hides hardware details, exposing memory windows, scratchpads
56and doorbells of the other side via a hardware independent KPI to the
57.Xr ntb 4
58subsystem.
59.Pp
60The hardware provides 2 or 3 memory windows to the other system's memory,
6116 scratchpad registers and 14, 31 or 34 doorbells to interrupt the other
62system, depending on the platform.
63On Xeon processors one of the memory windows is typically consumed by the driver
64itself to work around multiple hardware errata.
65.Sh CONFIGURATION
66The NTB configuration should be set by BIOS.
67It includes enabling NTB, choosing between NTB-to-NTB (back-to-back) or
68NTB-to-Root Port mode,
69enabling split BAR mode (one of two 64-bit BARs can be split into two 32-bit
70ones) and configuring BAR sizes in bits (from 12 to 29/39) for both NTB sides.
71.Pp
72The recommended configuration is NTB-to-NTB mode, split bar enabled and
73all BAR sizes set to 20 (1 MiB).
74This needs to be done on both systems.
75Note, on Xeon SkyLake and newer platforms, split bar mode is not available.
76.Sh SEE ALSO
77.Xr if_ntb 4 ,
78.Xr ntb_transport 4 ,
79.Xr ntb 4 ,
80.Sh AUTHORS
81.An -nosplit
82The
83.Nm
84driver was developed by Intel and originally written by
85.An Carl Delsey Aq Mt carl@FreeBSD.org .
86Later improvements were done by
87.An Conrad E. Meyer Aq Mt cem@FreeBSD.org
88and
89.An Alexander Motin Aq Mt mav@FreeBSD.org .
90.Sh BUGS
91NTB-to-Root Port mode is not yet supported, but it doesn't look very useful.
92.Pp
93On Xeon v2/v3/v4 processors split BAR mode should be enabled to allow
94SB01BASE_LOCKUP errata workaround to be applied by the driver.
95.Pp
96There is no way to protect your system from malicious behavior on the other
97system once the link is brought up.
98Anyone with root or kernel access on the other system can read or write to
99any location on your system.
100In other words, only connect two systems that completely trust each other.
101