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Message-ID: <20250503040802.1411285-4-joelagnelf@nvidia.com>
Date: Sat,  3 May 2025 00:07:55 -0400
From: Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@...dia.com>
To: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Danilo Krummrich <dakr@...nel.org>,
	Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankhorst@...ux.intel.com>,
	Maxime Ripard <mripard@...nel.org>,
	Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@...e.de>,
	David Airlie <airlied@...il.com>,
	Simona Vetter <simona@...ll.ch>,
	Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>
Cc: nouveau@...ts.freedesktop.org,
	dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org,
	Alexandre Courbot <acourbot@...dia.com>,
	John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>,
	Shirish Baskaran <sbaskaran@...dia.com>,
	Alistair Popple <apopple@...dia.com>,
	Timur Tabi <ttabi@...dia.com>,
	Ben Skeggs <bskeggs@...dia.com>,
	rust-for-linux@...r.kernel.org,
	Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@...dia.com>,
	linux-doc@...r.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH v2 3/7] nova-core: docs: Document vbios layout

Add detailed explanation and block diagrams of the layout of the vBIOS
on Nvidia GPUs. This is important to understand how nova-core boots an
Nvidia GPU.

[ Applied Timur Tabi's feedback on providing link to BIT documentation. ]

Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@...dia.com>
---
 Documentation/gpu/nova/core/vbios.rst | 177 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst      |   1 +
 2 files changed, 178 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/gpu/nova/core/vbios.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/vbios.rst b/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/vbios.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..04ced35648cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/vbios.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,177 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0+ OR MIT)
+==========
+VBIOS
+==========
+This document describes the layout of the VBIOS image which is a series of concatenated
+images in the ROM of the GPU. The VBIOS is mirrored onto the BAR 0 space and is read
+by both Boot ROM firmware (also known as IFR or init-from-rom firmware) on the GPU to
+boot strap various microcontrollers (PMU, SEC, GSP) with critical initialization before
+the driver loads, as well as by the nova-core driver in the kernel to boot the GSP.
+
+The format of the images in the ROM follow the "BIOS Specification" part of the
+PCI specification, with Nvidia-specific extensions. The ROM images of type FwSec
+are the ones that contain Falcon ucode and what we are mainly looking for.
+
+As an example, the following are the different image types that can be found in the
+VBIOS of an Ampere GA102 GPU which is supported by the nova-core driver.
+
+- PciAt Image (Type 0x00) - This is the standard PCI BIOS image who's naming likely
+    comes from the "IBM PC/AT" architecture.
+
+- EFI Image (Type 0x03) - This is the EFI BIOS image. It contains the UEFI GOP
+  driver that is used to display UEFI graphics output.
+
+- First FwSec Image (Type 0xE0) - The first FwSec image (Secure Firmware)
+
+- Second FwSec Image (Type 0xE0) - The second FwSec image (Secure Firmware)
+  contains various different microcodes (also known as an applications) that do
+  a range of different functions. The FWSEC ucode is run in heavy-secure mode and
+  typically runs directly on the GSP (it could be running on a different designated
+  processor in future generations but as of Ampere, it is the GSP). This firmware
+  then loads other firmware ucodes onto the PMU and SEC2 microcontrollers for gfw
+  initialization after GPU reset and before the driver loads (see devinit.rst).
+  The DEVINIT ucode is itself another ucode that is stored in this ROM partition.
+  
+The Falcon ucodes once located have  "Application Interfaces" in the data memory (DMEM)
+of the ucode. For FWSEC, the application interface we use for FWSEC is the "DMEM mapper"
+interface which is configured to run the "FRTS" command. This command performs carving
+out of the WPR2 area (Write protected region) in the VRAM and placing important data
+called 'FRTS' into it which contains power-management data. The WPR2 region is only
+accessible to heavy-secure ucode.
+
+.. note::
+   It is not clear why FwSec has 2 different partitions in the ROM, but they both
+   are of type 0xE0 and can be identified as such. This could be subject to change
+   in future generations.
+
+VBIOS ROM Layout
+----------------
+The VBIOS layout is roughly a series of concatenated images as follows:
+(For more explanations of acronyms, see the detailed descriptions in vbios.rs).
+
+.. note::
+   This diagram is created based on an GA-102 Ampere GPU as an example and could
+   vary for future or other GPUs.
+
+Here is a block diagram of the VBIOS layout::
+
+ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
+ │ VBIOS (Starting at ROM_OFFSET: 0x300000)                               │
+ ├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
+ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐                      │
+ │ │ PciAt Image (Type 0x00)                       │                      │
+ │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤                      │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ ROM Header        │                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ (Signature 0xAA55)│                         │                      │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │                      │
+ │ │         │ rom header's pci_data_struct_offset │                      │
+ │ │         │ points to the PCIR structure        │                      │
+ │ │         V                                     │                      │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ PCIR Structure    │                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ (Signature "PCIR")│                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ last_image: 0x80  │                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ image_len: size   │                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ in 512-byte units │                         │                      │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │                      │
+ │ │         │                                     │                      │
+ │ │         │ NPDE immediately follows PCIR       │                      │
+ │ │         V                                     │                      │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ NPDE Structure    │                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ (Signature "NPDE")│                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ last_image: 0x00  │                         │                      │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │                      │
+ │ │                                               │                      │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ BIT Header        │ (Signature scanning     │                      │
+ │ │ │ (Signature "BIT") │  provides the location  │                      │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘  of the BIT table)      │                      │
+ │ │         │ header is                           │                      │
+ │ │         | followed by a table of tokens       │                      │
+ │ │         V one of which is for falcon data.    │                      │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ BIT Tokens        │                         │                      │
+ │ | |  ______________   |                         |                      |
+ │ │ │ │ Falcon Data │   │                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ │ Token (0x70)│---+------------>------------┼──+                   │
+ │ │ │ └─────────────┘   │  falcon_data_ptr()      │  │                   │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │  V                   │
+ │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘  │                   │
+ │              (no gap between images)               │                   │
+ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐  │                   │
+ │ │ EFI Image (Type 0x03)                         │  │                   │
+ │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤  │                   │
+ │ | Contains the UEFI GOP driver (Graphics Output)|  |                   |
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ ROM Header        │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ +───────────────────+                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ PCIR Structure    │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ +───────────────────+                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ NPDE Structure    │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ Image data        │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │  │                   │
+ │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘  │                   │
+ │              (no gap between images)               │                   │
+ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐  │                   │
+ │ │ First FwSec Image (Type 0xE0)                 │  │                   │
+ │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤  │                   │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ ROM Header        │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ +───────────────────+                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ PCIR Structure    │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ +───────────────────+                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ NPDE Structure    │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ Image data        │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │  │                   │
+ │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘  │                   │
+ │              (no gap between images)               │                   │
+ │ ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐  │                   │
+ │ │ Second FwSec Image (Type 0xE0)                │  │                   │
+ │ ├───────────────────────────────────────────────┤  │                   │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ ROM Header        │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ +───────────────────+                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ PCIR Structure    │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ +───────────────────+                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ NPDE Structure    │                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │  │                   │
+ │ │                                               │  │                   │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │  │                   │
+ │ │ │ PMU Lookup Table  │ <- falcon_data_offset   │<─┘                   │
+ │ │ │ ┌─────────────┐   │    pmu_lookup_table     │                      │
+ │ │ │ │ Entry 0x85  │   │                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ │ FWSEC_PROD  │   │                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ └─────────────┘   │                         │                      │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │                      │
+ │ │         │                                     │                      │
+ │ │         │ points to                           │                      │
+ │ │         V                                     │                      │
+ │ │ ┌───────────────────┐                         │                      │
+ │ │ │ FalconUCodeDescV3 │ <- falcon_ucode_offset  │                      │
+ │ │ │ (FWSEC Firmware)  │    fwsec_header()       │                      │
+ │ │ └───────────────────┘                         │                      │
+ │ │         │   immediately followed  by...       │                      │
+ │ │         V                                     │                      │
+ │ │ ┌────────────────────────────┐                │                      │
+ │ │ │ Signatures + FWSEC Ucode   │                │                      │
+ │ │ │ fwsec_sigs(), fwsec_ucode()│                │                      │
+ │ │ └────────────────────────────┘                │                      │
+ │ └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘______________________│
+
+Falcon data Lookup
+------------------
+A key part of the VBIOS extraction code (vbios.rs) is to find the location of the
+Falcon data in the VBIOS which contains the PMU lookup table. This lookup table is
+used to find the required Falcon ucode based on an application ID.
+
+The location of the PMU lookup table is found by scanning the BIT (`BIOS Information Table`_)
+tokens for a token with the id `BIT_TOKEN_ID_FALCON_DATA` (0x70) which indicates the
+offset of the same from the start of the VBIOS image. Unfortunately, the offset
+does not account for the EFI image that sits between the PciAt image and the FwSec
+images, the vbios.rs code compensates for that with appropriate arithmetic.
+
+.. _`BIOS Information Table`: https://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/BIOS-Information-Table/1/BIOS-Information-Table.html
diff --git a/Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst b/Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst
index 2701b3f4af35..91cc802ed94f 100644
--- a/Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst
@@ -27,4 +27,5 @@ vGPU manager VFIO driver and the nova-drm driver.
    :titlesonly:
 
    core/guidelines
+   core/vbios
    core/todo
-- 
2.43.0


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