xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/nvdimm.4 (revision dd41de95a84d979615a2ef11df6850622bf6184e)
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4.\" Konstantin Belousov <kib@FreeBSD.org> under sponsorship
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28.\" $FreeBSD$
29.\"
30.Dd September 5, 2019
31.Dt NVDIMM 4
32.Os
33.Sh NAME
34.Nm nvdimm
35.Nd ACPI NVDIMM driver
36.Sh SYNOPSIS
37To load the driver as a module at boot, place the following line in
38.Xr loader.conf 5 :
39.Bd -literal -offset indent
40nvdimm_load="YES"
41.Ed
42.Sh DESCRIPTION
43.Bf -symbolic
44Note:
45The
46.Nm
47driver is under development and has some important limitations
48described below.
49.Ef
50.Pp
51The
52.Nm
53driver provides access to Non-Volatile DIMM (NVDIMM) persistent memory
54devices, which are ACPI-enumerated under the root NVDIMM device
55with a
56.Va _HID
57of
58.Dv ACPI0012
59and in the
60.Dv NFIT
61table.
62.Pp
63For each System Physical Address (SPA) Range described by NFIT, a
64device node
65.Pa /dev/nvdimm_spaNNN
66is created, where
67.Dv NNN
68is the SPA position in the table.
69The node can be used to
70.Xr read 2 ,
71.Xr write 2 ,
72or
73.Xr mmap 2
74the device.
75.Pp
76Also, for each SPA, the geom provider
77.Pa spaNNN
78is created, which can be used to create a conventional filesystem (e.g.,
79by
80.Xr newfs 8 )
81and
82.Xr mount 8
83it as any storage volume.
84Content accessible by
85.Pa /dev/nvdimm_spaNNN
86and
87.Pa /dev/spaNNN
88is coherent.
89.Pp
90The
91.Nm
92driver has support for reading NVDIMM namespaces (if supported by your
93hardware and already configured by some other mechanism, e.g., a BIOS
94configuration screen).
95The driver will provide a
96.Pa /dev/nvdimm_spaNNNnsMMM
97device node and
98.Pa spaNNNnsMMM
99geom provider for each namespace in a SPA, which behave analogously to their
100full-SPA cousins described above.
101.Sh SEE ALSO
102.Xr ACPI 4 ,
103.Xr GEOM 4 ,
104.Xr geom 8 ,
105.Xr mount 8 ,
106.Xr newfs 8 ,
107.Xr disk 9
108.Sh HISTORY
109The
110.Nm
111driver first appeared in
112.Fx 12.0 .
113.Sh AUTHORS
114.An -nosplit
115The
116.Nm
117driver was originally written by
118.An Konstantin Belousov Aq Mt kib@FreeBSD.org ,
119and then updated by
120.An D. Scott Phillips Aq Mt scottph@FreeBSD.org .
121.Sh BUGS
122The
123.Nm
124driver does not utilize the Block Window interface, so if a write to an
125NVDIMM is interrupted due to a system crash or power outage,
126the corresponding page might be left in a partially updated state.
127.Pp
128There is no support for Device-Specific Methods (DSM), used to report and
129control device health and wearing.
130.Pp
131The driver depends on the
132.Xr pmap_largemap 9
133pmap interface, which is currently only implemented on amd64.
134The interface can be only reasonable implemented on 64bit architectures.
135