cpu/x86/mtrr: Use a Kconfig for reserving MTRRs for OS

Some platforms which have large amounts of RAM and also write-combining
regions may decide to drop the WC regions in favor of the default when
preserving MTRRs for the OS. From a data safety perspective, this is
safe to do, but if, say, the graphics framebuffer is the region that is
changed from WC to UC/WB, then the performance of writing to the
framebuffer will decrease dramatically.

Modern OSes typically use Page Attribute Tables (PAT) to determine the
cacheability on a page level and usually do not touch the MTRRs. Thus,
it is believed to be safe to stop reserving MTRRs for the OS, in
general; PentiumII is the exception here in that OSes that still
support that may still require MTRRs to be available. In any case, if
the OS wants to reprogram all of the MTRRs, it is of course still free
to do so (after consulting the e820 table).

BUG=b:185452338
TEST=Verify MTRR programming on a brya (where `sa_add_dram_resources`
was faked to think it had 32 GiB of DRAM installed) and variable MTRR
map includes a WC entry for the framebuffer (and all the RAM):
MTRR: default type WB/UC MTRR counts: 13/9.
MTRR: UC selected as default type.
MTRR: 0 base 0x0000000000000000 mask 0x00003fff80000000 type 6
MTRR: 1 base 0x0000000077000000 mask 0x00003fffff000000 type 0
MTRR: 2 base 0x0000000078000000 mask 0x00003ffff8000000 type 0
MTRR: 3 base 0x0000000090000000 mask 0x00003ffff0000000 type 1
MTRR: 4 base 0x0000000100000000 mask 0x00003fff00000000 type 6
MTRR: 5 base 0x0000000200000000 mask 0x00003ffe00000000 type 6
MTRR: 6 base 0x0000000400000000 mask 0x00003ffc00000000 type 6
MTRR: 7 base 0x0000000800000000 mask 0x00003fff80000000 type 6
MTRR: 8 base 0x000000087fc00000 mask 0x00003fffffc00000 type 0

ADL has 9 variable-range MTRRs, previously 8 of them were used, and
there was no separate entry for the framebuffer, thus leaving the
default MTRR in place of uncached.

Change-Id: I2ae2851248c95fd516627b101ebcb36ec59c29c3
Signed-off-by: Tim Wawrzynczak <twawrzynczak@chromium.org>
Reviewed-on: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/52522
Tested-by: build bot (Jenkins) <no-reply@coreboot.org>
Reviewed-by: Angel Pons <th3fanbus@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Furquan Shaikh <furquan@google.com>
3 files changed
tree: 4bc09cccbf0166c15d04c332d414c652d7e2e270
  1. 3rdparty/
  2. configs/
  3. Documentation/
  4. LICENSES/
  5. payloads/
  6. src/
  7. tests/
  8. util/
  9. .checkpatch.conf
  10. .clang-format
  11. .editorconfig
  12. .gitignore
  13. .gitmodules
  14. .gitreview
  15. AUTHORS
  16. COPYING
  17. gnat.adc
  18. MAINTAINERS
  19. Makefile
  20. Makefile.inc
  21. README.md
  22. toolchain.inc
README.md

coreboot README

coreboot is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) found in most computers. coreboot performs a little bit of hardware initialization and then executes additional boot logic, called a payload.

With the separation of hardware initialization and later boot logic, coreboot can scale from specialized applications that run directly firmware, run operating systems in flash, load custom bootloaders, or implement firmware standards, like PC BIOS services or UEFI. This allows for systems to only include the features necessary in the target application, reducing the amount of code and flash space required.

coreboot was formerly known as LinuxBIOS.

Payloads

After the basic initialization of the hardware has been performed, any desired "payload" can be started by coreboot.

See https://www.coreboot.org/Payloads for a list of supported payloads.

Supported Hardware

coreboot supports a wide range of chipsets, devices, and mainboards.

For details please consult:

Build Requirements

  • make
  • gcc / g++ Because Linux distribution compilers tend to use lots of patches. coreboot does lots of "unusual" things in its build system, some of which break due to those patches, sometimes by gcc aborting, sometimes - and that's worse - by generating broken object code. Two options: use our toolchain (eg. make crosstools-i386) or enable the ANY_TOOLCHAIN Kconfig option if you're feeling lucky (no support in this case).
  • iasl (for targets with ACPI support)
  • pkg-config
  • libssl-dev (openssl)

Optional:

  • doxygen (for generating/viewing documentation)
  • gdb (for better debugging facilities on some targets)
  • ncurses (for make menuconfig and make nconfig)
  • flex and bison (for regenerating parsers)

Building coreboot

Please consult https://www.coreboot.org/Build_HOWTO for details.

Testing coreboot Without Modifying Your Hardware

If you want to test coreboot without any risks before you really decide to use it on your hardware, you can use the QEMU system emulator to run coreboot virtually in QEMU.

Please see https://www.coreboot.org/QEMU for details.

Website and Mailing List

Further details on the project, a FAQ, many HOWTOs, news, development guidelines and more can be found on the coreboot website:

https://www.coreboot.org

You can contact us directly on the coreboot mailing list:

https://www.coreboot.org/Mailinglist

Copyright and License

The copyright on coreboot is owned by quite a large number of individual developers and companies. Please check the individual source files for details.

coreboot is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Some files are licensed under the "GPL (version 2, or any later version)", and some files are licensed under the "GPL, version 2". For some parts, which were derived from other projects, other (GPL-compatible) licenses may apply. Please check the individual source files for details.

This makes the resulting coreboot images licensed under the GPL, version 2.