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authorStewart Smith <stewart@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2016-07-27 17:43:03 +1000
committerStewart Smith <stewart@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2016-08-02 17:31:12 +1000
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+skiboot overview
+================
+
+skiboot is firmware, loaded by the FSP. Along with loading the bootloader,
+it provides some runtime services to the OS (typically Linux).
+
+Source layout
+-------------
+asm/ small amount, mainly entry points
+ccan/ bits from CCAN
+core/ common code among machines.
+doc/ not enough here
+external/ tools to run external of sapphire.
+hdata/ all stuff going to/from FSP
+hw/ drivers for things & fsp things.
+include/ headers!
+libc/ tiny libc, from SLOF
+libfdt/ straight device tree lib
+libpore/ to manipulate PORE engine.
+
+We have a spinlock implementation in asm/lock.S
+Entry points are detailed in asm/head.S
+The main C entry point is in core/init.c: main_cpu_entry()
+
+Binaries
+--------
+The following binaries are built:
+
+skiboot.lid: is the actual lid. objdump out
+skiboot.elf: is the elf binary of it, lid comes from this
+skiboot.map: plain map of symbols
+
+Booting
+-------
+
+On boot, every thread of execution jumps to a single entry point in skiboot
+so we need to do some magic to ensure we init things properly and don't stomp
+on each other. We choose a master thread, putting everybody else into a
+spinloop.
+
+Essentially, we do this by doing an atomic fetch and inc and whoever gets 0
+gets to be the master.
+
+When we enter skiboot we also get a memory location in a register which
+is the location of a device tree for the system. We fatten out the device
+tree, turning offsets into real pointers and manipulating it where needed.
+We re-flatten the device tree before booting the OS (Linux).
+
+The main entry point is main_cpu_entry() in core/init.c, this is a carefully
+ordered init of things. The sequence is relatively well documented there.
+
+OS interface
+------------
+
+Skiboot maintains its own stack for each CPU. We do not have an ABI like
+"may use X stack on OS stack", we entirely keep to our own stack space.
+The OS (Linux) calling skiboot will never use any OS stack space and the OS
+does not need to call skiboot with a valid stack.
+
+We define an array of stacks, one for each CPU. On entry to skiboot,
+we can find out stack by multiplying our CPU number by the stack size and
+adding that to the address of the stack area.
+
+At the bottom of each stack area is a per CPU data structure, which we
+can get to by chopping off the LSBs of the stack pointer.
+
+The OPAL interface is a generic message queue. The Linux side of things
+can be found in linux/arch/powerpc/platform/powernv/opal-*.c
+
+Interrupts
+----------
+
+We don't handle interrupts in skiboot.
+
+In the future we may have to change to process machine check interrupts
+during boot.
+
+We do not have timer interrupts.
+
+
+Memory
+------
+
+We initially occupy a chunk of memory, "heap". We pass to the OS (Linux)
+a reservation of what we occupy (including stacks).
+
+In the source file include/config.h we include a memory map. This is
+manually generated, not automatically generated.
+
+We use CCAN for a bunch of helper code, turning on things like DEBUG_LOCKS
+and DEBUG_MALLOC as these are not a performance issue for us, and we like
+to be careful.
+
+In include/config.h there are defines for turning on extra tracing.
+OPAL is what we name the interface from skiboot to OS (Linux).
+
+Each CPU gets a 16k stack, which is probably more than enough. Stack
+should be used sparingly though.
+
+Important memory locations:
+
+SKIBOOT_BASE - where we sit
+
+HEAP_BASE,
+HEAP_SIZE - the location and size for heap. We reserve 4MB for
+ initial allocations.
+
+There is also SKIBOOT_SIZE (manually calculated) and DEVICE_TREE_MAX_SIZE,
+which is largely historical.
+
+Skiboot log
+-----------
+
+There is a circular log buffer that skiboot maintains. This can be
+accessed either from the FSP or through /dev/mem or through a debugfs
+patch that's currently floating around.