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 ------------- ========= =================================== Directory Content ========= =================================== 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: =========== ============================================ File Purpose =========== ============================================ 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 flatten 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/ 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: ============= ============================================================ Location What's there ============= ============================================================ SKIBOOT_BASE where skiboot lives, of SKIBOOT_SIZE HEAP_BASE Where skiboot heap starts, of HEAP_SIZE ============= ============================================================ 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.