mirror of https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@nvidia.com>
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, rust-for-linux@vger.kernel.org,
	dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org, dakr@kernel.org,
	acourbot@nvidia.com
Cc: Alistair Popple <apopple@nvidia.com>,
	Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>,
	Alex Gaynor <alex.gaynor@gmail.com>,
	Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>, Gary Guo <gary@garyguo.net>,
	bjorn3_gh@protonmail.com, Benno Lossin <lossin@kernel.org>,
	Andreas Hindborg <a.hindborg@kernel.org>,
	Alice Ryhl <aliceryhl@google.com>,
	Trevor Gross <tmgross@umich.edu>,
	David Airlie <airlied@gmail.com>, Simona Vetter <simona@ffwll.ch>,
	Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankhorst@linux.intel.com>,
	Maxime Ripard <mripard@kernel.org>,
	Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>,
	John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com>,
	Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@nvidia.com>,
	Timur Tabi <ttabi@nvidia.com>,
	joel@joelfernandes.org, Elle Rhumsaa <elle@weathered-steel.dev>,
	Daniel Almeida <daniel.almeida@collabora.com>,
	nouveau@lists.freedesktop.org
Subject: [PATCH 4/7] docs: gpu: nova-core: Document the PRAMIN aperture mechanism
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2025 14:55:36 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20251020185539.49986-5-joelagnelf@nvidia.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20251020185539.49986-1-joelagnelf@nvidia.com>

While not terribly complicated, a little bit of documentation will help
augment the code for this very important mechanism.

Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes <joelagnelf@nvidia.com>
---
 Documentation/gpu/nova/core/pramin.rst | 113 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
 Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst       |   1 +
 2 files changed, 114 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/gpu/nova/core/pramin.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/pramin.rst b/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/pramin.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..19615e504db9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/gpu/nova/core/pramin.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+=========================
+PRAMIN aperture mechanism
+=========================
+
+.. note::
+   The following description is approximate and current as of the Ampere family.
+   It may change for future generations and is intended to assist in understanding
+   the driver code.
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+PRAMIN is a hardware aperture mechanism that provides CPU access to GPU Video RAM (VRAM) before
+the GPU's Memory Management Unit (MMU) and page tables are initialized. This 1MB sliding window,
+located at a fixed offset within BAR0, is essential for setting up page tables and other critical
+GPU data structures without relying on the GPU's MMU.
+
+Architecture Overview
+=====================
+
+Logically, the PRAMIN aperture mechanism is implemented by the GPU's PBUS (PCIe Bus Controller Unit)
+and provides a CPU-accessible window into VRAM through the PCIe interface::
+
+    +-----------------+    PCIe     +------------------------------+
+    |      CPU        |<----------->|           GPU                |
+    +-----------------+             |                              |
+                                    |  +----------------------+    |
+                                    |  |       PBUS           |    |
+                                    |  |  (Bus Controller)    |    |
+                                    |  |                      |    |
+                                    |  |  +--------------.<------------ (window always starts at
+                                    |  |  |   PRAMIN     |    |    |     BAR0 + 0x700000)
+                                    |  |  |   Window     |    |    |
+                                    |  |  |   (1MB)      |    |    |
+                                    |  |  +--------------+    |    |
+                                    |  |         |            |    |
+                                    |  +---------|------------+    |
+                                    |            |                 |
+                                    |            v                 |
+                                    |  .----------------------.<------------ (Program PRAMIN to any
+                                    |  |       VRAM           |    |    64KB VRAM physical boundary)
+                                    |  |    (Several GBs)     |    |
+                                    |  |                      |    |
+                                    |  |  FB[0x000000000000]  |    |
+                                    |  |          ...         |    |
+                                    |  |  FB[0x7FFFFFFFFFF]   |    |
+                                    |  +----------------------+    |
+                                    +------------------------------+
+
+PBUS (PCIe Bus Controller) among other things is responsible in the GPU for handling MMIO
+accesses to the BAR registers.
+
+PRAMIN Window Operation
+=======================
+
+The PRAMIN window provides a 1MB sliding aperture that can be repositioned over
+the entire VRAM address space using the NV_PBUS_BAR0_WINDOW register.
+
+Window Control Mechanism
+-------------------------
+
+The window position is controlled via the PBUS BAR0_WINDOW register::
+
+    NV_PBUS_BAR0_WINDOW Register
+    +-----+-----+--------------------------------------+
+    |31-26|25-24|           23-0                       |
+    |     |TARG |         BASE_ADDR                    |
+    |     | ET  |        (bits 39:16 of VRAM address)  |
+    +-----+-----+--------------------------------------+
+
+    TARGET field values:
+    - 0x0: VID_MEM (Video Memory / VRAM)
+    - 0x1: SYS_MEM_COHERENT (Coherent system memory)
+    - 0x2: SYS_MEM_NONCOHERENT (Non-coherent system memory)
+
+64KB Alignment Requirement
+---------------------------
+
+The PRAMIN window must be aligned to 64KB boundaries in VRAM. This is enforced
+by the BASE_ADDR field representing bits [39:16] of the target address::
+
+    VRAM Address Calculation:
+    actual_vram_addr = (BASE_ADDR << 16) + pramin_offset
+    Where:
+    - BASE_ADDR: 24-bit value from NV_PBUS_BAR0_WINDOW[23:0]
+    - pramin_offset: 20-bit offset within PRAMIN window [0x00000-0xFFFFF]
+    Example Window Positioning:
+    +---------------------------------------------------------+
+    |                    VRAM Space                           |
+    |                                                         |
+    |  0x000000000  +-----------------+ <-- 64KB aligned      |
+    |               | PRAMIN Window   |                       |
+    |               |    (1MB)        |                       |
+    |  0x0000FFFFF  +-----------------+                       |
+    |                                                         |
+    |       |              ^                                  |
+    |       |              | Window can slide                 |
+    |       v              | to any 64KB boundary             |
+    |                                                         |
+    |  0x123400000  +-----------------+ <-- 64KB aligned      |
+    |               | PRAMIN Window   |                       |
+    |               |    (1MB)        |                       |
+    |  0x1234FFFFF  +-----------------+                       |
+    |                                                         |
+    |                       ...                               |
+    |                                                         |
+    |  0x7FFFF0000  +-----------------+ <-- 64KB aligned      |
+    |               | PRAMIN Window   |                       |
+    |               |    (1MB)        |                       |
+    |  0x7FFFFFFFF  +-----------------+                       |
+    +---------------------------------------------------------+
diff --git a/Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst b/Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst
index 46302daace34..e77d3ee336a4 100644
--- a/Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/gpu/nova/index.rst
@@ -33,3 +33,4 @@ vGPU manager VFIO driver and the nova-drm driver.
    core/fwsec
    core/falcon
    core/msgq
+   core/pramin
-- 
2.34.1


  parent reply	other threads:[~2025-10-20 18:56 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 55+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2025-10-20 18:55 [PATCH 0/7] Pre-requisite patches for mm and irq in nova-core Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 18:55 ` [PATCH 1/7] docs: rust: Fix a few grammatical errors Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 21:21   ` John Hubbard
2025-10-20 21:33   ` Miguel Ojeda
2025-10-20 23:23     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 18:55 ` [PATCH 2/7] gpu: nova-core: Add support to convert bitfield to underlying type Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 21:25   ` John Hubbard
2025-10-22  6:25   ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-22 17:51     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 18:55 ` [PATCH 3/7] docs: gpu: nova-core: Document GSP RPC message queue architecture Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 21:49   ` John Hubbard
2025-10-22  1:43   ` Bagas Sanjaya
2025-10-22 11:16   ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-20 18:55 ` Joel Fernandes [this message]
2025-10-20 19:36   ` [PATCH 4/7] docs: gpu: nova-core: Document the PRAMIN aperture mechanism John Hubbard
2025-10-20 19:48     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 20:42       ` John Hubbard
2025-10-20 20:45         ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 22:08   ` John Hubbard
2025-10-22  2:09   ` Bagas Sanjaya
2025-10-20 18:55 ` [PATCH 5/7] gpu: nova-core: Add support for managing GSP falcon interrupts Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 22:35   ` John Hubbard
2025-10-21 18:42     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-22  6:48     ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-22 21:09       ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-22 23:16         ` John Hubbard
2025-10-22  6:47   ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-22 21:05     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 18:55 ` [PATCH 6/7] nova-core: mm: Add support to use PRAMIN windows to write to VRAM Joel Fernandes
2025-10-22  2:18   ` John Hubbard
2025-10-22 17:48     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-22 20:43       ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-24 11:31       ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-22 10:41   ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-22 22:04     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-24 11:39       ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-20 18:55 ` [PATCH 7/7] nova-core: mm: Add data structures for page table management Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 20:59   ` John Hubbard
2025-10-21 18:26     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-21 20:30       ` John Hubbard
2025-10-21 21:58         ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 21:30   ` Miguel Ojeda
2025-11-03 19:21     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-11-04 17:54       ` Miguel Ojeda
2025-11-04 18:18         ` Danilo Krummrich
2025-11-03 19:29     ` John Hubbard
2025-11-04 17:56       ` Miguel Ojeda
2025-11-05  2:25         ` John Hubbard
2025-10-22 11:21   ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-22 19:13     ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-20 21:20 ` [PATCH 0/7] Pre-requisite patches for mm and irq in nova-core John Hubbard
2025-10-21 18:29   ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-22  6:57 ` Alexandre Courbot
2025-10-22 21:30   ` Joel Fernandes
2025-10-24 11:51     ` Alexandre Courbot

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20251020185539.49986-5-joelagnelf@nvidia.com \
    --to=joelagnelf@nvidia.com \
    --cc=a.hindborg@kernel.org \
    --cc=acourbot@nvidia.com \
    --cc=airlied@gmail.com \
    --cc=alex.gaynor@gmail.com \
    --cc=aliceryhl@google.com \
    --cc=apopple@nvidia.com \
    --cc=bjorn3_gh@protonmail.com \
    --cc=boqun.feng@gmail.com \
    --cc=dakr@kernel.org \
    --cc=daniel.almeida@collabora.com \
    --cc=dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org \
    --cc=elle@weathered-steel.dev \
    --cc=gary@garyguo.net \
    --cc=jhubbard@nvidia.com \
    --cc=joel@joelfernandes.org \
    --cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=lossin@kernel.org \
    --cc=maarten.lankhorst@linux.intel.com \
    --cc=mripard@kernel.org \
    --cc=nouveau@lists.freedesktop.org \
    --cc=ojeda@kernel.org \
    --cc=rust-for-linux@vger.kernel.org \
    --cc=simona@ffwll.ch \
    --cc=tmgross@umich.edu \
    --cc=ttabi@nvidia.com \
    --cc=tzimmermann@suse.de \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox

all inboxes | Powered by JetHome®