Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2] x86: gigabyte alignment for ram

[Gerd Hoffmann]

  Hi,

> > Problem is that the firmware places the xbar @ 0xb000000.
> > Hardcoded, assuming qemu will not map ram above 0xb0000000.
> 
> Can't bios figure out the size of memory below 4G from fwcfg?
> I refer to 7db16f2480db5e246d34d0c453cff4f58549df0e specifically.

It can, but it doesn't.

Additional issue for coreboot is that mmconfig base is a compile-time
constant, because it is setup _very_ early in the boot process.
Coreboot then does the whole pci initialization using mmconfig.

On the other hand coreboot has a much more sophisticated ressource
management than seabios, so moving the mmconf xbar up to to
0xe0000000-0xefffffff, then managing two regions (below 0xe0000000 and
above 0xf0000000) for pci bars probably isn't a big issue for coreboot.

> > So, we must (a) fix firmware first and (b) get a ugly dependency
> > that older firmware will not run on latest qemu.
> 
> That's only important for old machine types though, right?

Correct.  That makes it a bit less problematic, but it is still not very
nice.

> > We also need to figure how we wanna fixup things.  So, current memory
> > layout looks like this:
> > 
> >    0x00000000 - 0xafffffff  --  RAM / unused
> >    0xb0000000 - 0xbfffffff  --  mmconfig xbar [256 pci busses]
> >    0xc0000000 - 0xfec00000  --  space for pci bars, almost 1g
> > 
> > Largest pci bar we can map below 4g is 512m, @ 0xc0000000.
> > 
> > If we wanna map 3G RAM we need to move the xbar somewhere else.  Big
> > question is where?
> > 
> > We can move it to 0xc0000000.  Then we can't map 512m pci bars any more.
> 
> I would go for this when we have 3G of RAM.
> I think that ability to support a single 512m BAR is not all that important.

Use case: pci passthrough of graphics cards.

> > We can move it to 0xe0000000.  Then we have to split the pci bar space,
> > mapping large bars below 0xe0000000 and small ones above 0xf0000000.
> > SeaBIOS pci init code isn't really up to it.
> > Could also become tricky
> > to declare it correctly in acpi / e820 due to the split.
> 
> My laptop's ACPI has this space all fragmented up, seems to boot fine ...

We need to change the way we reserve the mmconfig space though.  

Currently it is marked reserved in the e820 table.  Having that overlap
with the _CRS region makes windows quite unhappy, we tried that
recently.

My laptop has the mmconfig space declared as LPC ressource:

            Device (LPC)
            {
                Name (_ADR, 0x001F0000)  // _ADR: Address
                Name (_S3D, 0x03)  // _S3D: S3 Device State
                Name (RID, 0x00)
                Device (SIO)
                {
                    Name (_HID, EisaId ("PNP0C02"))
                    Name (_UID, 0x00)  // _UID: Unique ID
                    Name (SCRS, ResourceTemplate ()
[ ... ]
                        Memory32Fixed (ReadWrite,
                            0xF8000000,         // Address Base
                            0x04000000,         // Address Length
                            )
[ ... ]
                    Method (_CRS, 0, NotSerialized)
[ ... return SCRS, with updates applied in some cases ... ]

When doing it this way we can simply make the PCI0._CRS cover the whole
end-of-ram -> ioapic-base range, simliar to piix, and we are pretty free
to place the mmconfig xbar anywhere in that area.

Doing the transition is non-trivial though because we (a) move the job
of reserving the mmconfig area from firmware to qemu and (b) the testing
needed for that.

Maybe we should set the gbyte alignment on q35 aside for a while and
tackle the mmconfig reservation handling first.

cheers,
  Gerd