NTB_HW_INTEL(4) FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual NTB_HW_INTEL(4)
NAME
ntb_hw_intel - Intel(R) Non-Transparent Bridge driver
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into your kernel, place the following lines in
your kernel configuration file:
device ntb
device ntb_hw_intel
Or, to load the driver as a module at boot, place the following line in
loader.conf(5):
ntb_hw_intel_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The ntb_hw_intel driver provides support for the Non-Transparent Bridge
(NTB) hardware in Intel Xeon E3/E5 and S1200 processor families, which
allow one of their PCIe ports to be switched from transparent to non-
transparent bridge mode. In this mode the bridge looks not like a PCI
bridge, but like a PCI endpoint device. The driver hides hardware
details, exposing memory windows, scratchpads and doorbells of the other
side via a hardware independent KPI to the ntb(4) subsystem.
The hardware provides 2 or 3 memory windows to the other system's memory,
16 scratchpad registers and 14, 31 or 34 doorbells to interrupt the other
system, depending on the platform. On Xeon processors one of the memory
windows is typically consumed by the driver itself to work around
multiple hardware errata.
CONFIGURATION
The NTB configuration should be set by BIOS. It includes enabling NTB,
choosing between NTB-to-NTB (back-to-back) or NTB-to-Root Port mode,
enabling split BAR mode (one of two 64-bit BARs can be split into two
32-bit ones) and configuring BAR sizes in bits (from 12 to 29/39) for
both NTB sides.
The recommended configuration is NTB-to-NTB mode, split bar enabled and
all BAR sizes set to 20 (1 MiB). This needs to be done on both systems.
Note, on Xeon SkyLake and newer platforms, split bar mode is not
available.
SEE ALSO
if_ntb(4), ntb(4), ntb_transport(4)
AUTHORS
The ntb_hw_intel driver was developed by Intel and originally written by
Carl Delsey <
[email protected]>. Later improvements were done by Conrad
E. Meyer <
[email protected]> and Alexander Motin <
[email protected]>.
BUGS
NTB-to-Root Port mode is not yet supported, but it doesn't look very
useful.
On Xeon v2/v3/v4 processors split BAR mode should be enabled to allow
SB01BASE_LOCKUP errata workaround to be applied by the driver.
There is no way to protect your system from malicious behavior on the
other system once the link is brought up. Anyone with root or kernel
access on the other system can read or write to any location on your
system. In other words, only connect two systems that completely trust
each other.
FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8 October 11, 2020 FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8