1 The PCI Express Port Bus Driver Guide HOWTO
2 Tom L Nguyen tom.l.nguyen@intel.com
7 This guide describes the basics of the PCI Express Port Bus driver
8 and provides information on how to enable the service drivers to
9 register/unregister with the PCI Express Port Bus Driver.
11 2. Copyright 2004 Intel Corporation
13 3. What is the PCI Express Port Bus Driver
15 A PCI Express Port is a logical PCI-PCI Bridge structure. There
16 are two types of PCI Express Port: the Root Port and the Switch
17 Port. The Root Port originates a PCI Express link from a PCI Express
18 Root Complex and the Switch Port connects PCI Express links to
19 internal logical PCI buses. The Switch Port, which has its secondary
20 bus representing the switch's internal routing logic, is called the
21 switch's Upstream Port. The switch's Downstream Port is bridging from
22 switch's internal routing bus to a bus representing the downstream
23 PCI Express link from the PCI Express Switch.
25 A PCI Express Port can provide up to four distinct functions,
26 referred to in this document as services, depending on its port type.
27 PCI Express Port's services include native hotplug support (HP),
28 power management event support (PME), advanced error reporting
29 support (AER), and virtual channel support (VC). These services may
30 be handled by a single complex driver or be individually distributed
31 and handled by corresponding service drivers.
33 4. Why use the PCI Express Port Bus Driver?
35 In existing Linux kernels, the Linux Device Driver Model allows a
36 physical device to be handled by only a single driver. The PCI
37 Express Port is a PCI-PCI Bridge device with multiple distinct
38 services. To maintain a clean and simple solution each service
39 may have its own software service driver. In this case several
40 service drivers will compete for a single PCI-PCI Bridge device.
41 For example, if the PCI Express Root Port native hotplug service
42 driver is loaded first, it claims a PCI-PCI Bridge Root Port. The
43 kernel therefore does not load other service drivers for that Root
44 Port. In other words, it is impossible to have multiple service
45 drivers load and run on a PCI-PCI Bridge device simultaneously
46 using the current driver model.
48 To enable multiple service drivers running simultaneously requires
49 having a PCI Express Port Bus driver, which manages all populated
50 PCI Express Ports and distributes all provided service requests
51 to the corresponding service drivers as required. Some key
52 advantages of using the PCI Express Port Bus driver are listed below:
54 - Allow multiple service drivers to run simultaneously on
55 a PCI-PCI Bridge Port device.
57 - Allow service drivers implemented in an independent
60 - Allow one service driver to run on multiple PCI-PCI Bridge
63 - Manage and distribute resources of a PCI-PCI Bridge Port
64 device to requested service drivers.
66 5. Configuring the PCI Express Port Bus Driver vs. Service Drivers
68 5.1 Including the PCI Express Port Bus Driver Support into the Kernel
70 Including the PCI Express Port Bus driver depends on whether the PCI
71 Express support is included in the kernel config. The kernel will
72 automatically include the PCI Express Port Bus driver as a kernel
73 driver when the PCI Express support is enabled in the kernel.
75 5.2 Enabling Service Driver Support
77 PCI device drivers are implemented based on Linux Device Driver Model.
78 All service drivers are PCI device drivers. As discussed above, it is
79 impossible to load any service driver once the kernel has loaded the
80 PCI Express Port Bus Driver. To meet the PCI Express Port Bus Driver
81 Model requires some minimal changes on existing service drivers that
82 imposes no impact on the functionality of existing service drivers.
84 A service driver is required to use the two APIs shown below to
85 register its service with the PCI Express Port Bus driver (see
86 section 5.2.1 & 5.2.2). It is important that a service driver
87 initializes the pcie_port_service_driver data structure, included in
88 header file /include/linux/pcieport_if.h, before calling these APIs.
89 Failure to do so will result an identity mismatch, which prevents
90 the PCI Express Port Bus driver from loading a service driver.
92 5.2.1 pcie_port_service_register
94 int pcie_port_service_register(struct pcie_port_service_driver *new)
96 This API replaces the Linux Driver Model's pci_register_driver API. A
97 service driver should always calls pcie_port_service_register at
98 module init. Note that after service driver being loaded, calls
99 such as pci_enable_device(dev) and pci_set_master(dev) are no longer
100 necessary since these calls are executed by the PCI Port Bus driver.
102 5.2.2 pcie_port_service_unregister
104 void pcie_port_service_unregister(struct pcie_port_service_driver *new)
106 pcie_port_service_unregister replaces the Linux Driver Model's
107 pci_unregister_driver. It's always called by service driver when a
112 Below is sample service driver code to initialize the port service
113 driver data structure.
115 static struct pcie_port_service_id service_id[] = { {
116 .vendor = PCI_ANY_ID,
117 .device = PCI_ANY_ID,
118 .port_type = PCIE_RC_PORT,
119 .service_type = PCIE_PORT_SERVICE_AER,
120 }, { /* end: all zeroes */ }
123 static struct pcie_port_service_driver root_aerdrv = {
124 .name = (char *)device_name,
125 .id_table = &service_id[0],
127 .probe = aerdrv_load,
128 .remove = aerdrv_unload,
130 .suspend = aerdrv_suspend,
131 .resume = aerdrv_resume,
134 Below is a sample code for registering/unregistering a service
137 static int __init aerdrv_service_init(void)
141 retval = pcie_port_service_register(&root_aerdrv);
150 static void __exit aerdrv_service_exit(void)
152 pcie_port_service_unregister(&root_aerdrv);
155 module_init(aerdrv_service_init);
156 module_exit(aerdrv_service_exit);
158 6. Possible Resource Conflicts
160 Since all service drivers of a PCI-PCI Bridge Port device are
161 allowed to run simultaneously, below lists a few of possible resource
162 conflicts with proposed solutions.
164 6.1 MSI and MSI-X Vector Resource
166 Once MSI or MSI-X interrupts are enabled on a device, it stays in this
167 mode until they are disabled again. Since service drivers of the same
168 PCI-PCI Bridge port share the same physical device, if an individual
169 service driver enables or disables MSI/MSI-X mode it may result
170 unpredictable behavior.
172 To avoid this situation all service drivers are not permitted to
173 switch interrupt mode on its device. The PCI Express Port Bus driver
174 is responsible for determining the interrupt mode and this should be
175 transparent to service drivers. Service drivers need to know only
176 the vector IRQ assigned to the field irq of struct pcie_device, which
177 is passed in when the PCI Express Port Bus driver probes each service
178 driver. Service drivers should use (struct pcie_device*)dev->irq to
179 call request_irq/free_irq. In addition, the interrupt mode is stored
180 in the field interrupt_mode of struct pcie_device.
182 6.3 PCI Memory/IO Mapped Regions
184 Service drivers for PCI Express Power Management (PME), Advanced
185 Error Reporting (AER), Hot-Plug (HP) and Virtual Channel (VC) access
186 PCI configuration space on the PCI Express port. In all cases the
187 registers accessed are independent of each other. This patch assumes
188 that all service drivers will be well behaved and not overwrite
189 other service driver's configuration settings.
191 6.4 PCI Config Registers
193 Each service driver runs its PCI config operations on its own
194 capability structure except the PCI Express capability structure, in
195 which Root Control register and Device Control register are shared
196 between PME and AER. This patch assumes that all service drivers
197 will be well behaved and not overwrite other service driver's
198 configuration settings.