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===============================================
Release notes for the Genode OS Framework 22.11
===============================================
Genode Labs
With version 22.11, we pursued two new exploratory topics as we envisioned on
the project's [https://genode.org/about/road-map - road map] for this year,
namely the use of the framework for hardware-software co-design work,
and principally enabling suspend/resume functionality on PCs.
A decade ago, we
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/11.02#Approaching_platform_support_for_Xilinx_MicroBlaze - explored the combination]
of Genode with FPGA technology for the first time.
Our interest in this direction got reignited two years ago when we started
enabling Genode on a board based on the Xilinx Zynq, which combines an ARMv7
SoC with FPGA fabric. This line of work eventually culminated in new
development work flows for creating hardware IP cores and Genode components in
tandem. Section [Hardware-software co-design with Genode on Xilinx Zynq] covers
the results of this line of work.
The second largely exploratory topic is the practical use of sleep states
on PC hardware, which - until this point - remained rather mysterious to us.
Section [Low-level mechanism for suspend/resume on PC platforms] reports
on our findings and the forthcoming integration of this feature into Genode.
Besides the exploration work, the profound enhancement of our Intel GPU
multiplexer stands out. As detailed in Section
[Hardware-accelerated graphics with Intel GEN12+ GPUs], the new version
supports up-to-date GEN12+ GPUs, comes with numerous robustness and
performance improvements, and got adapted to Genode's new uniform driver
infrastructure.
The latter point brings us to the most elaborate development under the hood
of the framework, which is the great unification of the device-driver
interfaces across all supported architectures.
Section [Uniform use of new platform-driver interface] wraps up this
intensive line of work, which left no PC-related driver unturned.
A recurring theme throughout this year is the use of Genode on the PinePhone.
The current release is no exception.
Sections [Emerging Sculpt OS variant for the PinePhone] and
[PinePhone drivers for audio, camera, and power control] report on the
progress at the user-facing side as well as the driver-related achievements
digging deep into the realms of power management, audio, and the camera.
Among the many further topics of the current release are virtualization on PC
and ARM (Sections [ARM virtual machine monitor] and [Seoul VMM]), plenty
of device-driver improvements, and enhanced tooling that makes the framework
ever more enjoyable to use (Section [Build system and tools]).
Hardware-software co-design with Genode on Xilinx Zynq
######################################################
A distinct feature of the Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC is the combination of its
Cortex-A9 CPU with an FPGA, which is also referred to as _programmable logic_.
As the name suggests, the FPGA can be programmed with custom hardware designs
and thus act as an accelerator, DSP, or an arbitrary peripheral device. The
Zynq platform thereby accommodates a playground for hardware-software co-design
for a comparably low budget.
While extending the platform support for the Zynq in general, we have
particularly been working towards establishing the required infrastructure
for supporting hardware-software co-design in Genode. With this release, we
can draw an almost complete picture of such a co-design workflow in Genode.
Our achievements culminate in a beginner-level tutorial for the Zybo Z7 board.
Runtime reconfiguration of the FPGA
===================================
A key component to FPGA runtime reconfiguration in Genode is the
_drivers_fpga-zynq_ subsystem that we already
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/22.05#Xilinx_Zynq - introduced with release 22.05].
This subsystem enabled bitstream loading at runtime in order to reprogram the
FPGA. In conjunction with the _Zynq Driver Manager_, it allowed
launching/stopping of device drivers in accordance with the availability of the
devices implemented on the FPGA.
For this release, we reworked this subsystem in order to support switching
between several bitstreams. In particular, we added a _devices manager_ to
merge the static 'devices' ROM with a bitstream-dependent set of devices. The
latter is specified by the component's configuration as follows:
! <config>
! <bitstream name="my_bitstream.bit">
! <devices>
! <device name="my_device" type="my_type">
! <io_mem address="0x43c00000" size="0x1000"/>
! </device>
! </devices>
! </bitstream>
! </config>
The configuration comprises an arbitrary number of _bitstream_ nodes with a
mandatory _name_ attribute. Each _bitstream_ node may contain a set of device
specifications as expected by the platform driver. The _devices manager_ merges
the static 'devices' ROM with the devices of the currently loaded bitstream,
which is reported by the _fpga_drv_ component. The result is then consumed
by the platform driver. The bitstream to be loaded is specified by the
configuration of the _fpga_drv_ as follows:
! <config>
! <bitstream name="my_bitstream.bit"/>
! </config>
These changes are bundled into the new _drivers_fpga-zynq_ subsystem.
The figure below illustrates how this subsystem is used as a replacement for
the platform driver.
[image zynq_driver_manager_22_11]
Just as the standard platform driver, the subsystem expects a 'policy' and
'devices' ROM. In addition, we must provide it with a _devices_manager.config_
ROM as shown above. The bitstreams as well as the configuration for the internal
_fpga_drv_ component must be provided via a file system session.
In addition to these changes to the _drivers_fpga-zynq_ subsystem, we added
configurability of the four FPGA clocks ("fpga0" to "fpga3") to the Zynq
platform driver. Moreover, we added four equally named reset domains.
All changes are found in the
[https://github.com/genodelabs/genode-zynq - genode-zynq]
repository.
Packaging of bitstreams with Goa
================================
Custom hardware designs for the Zynq SoC are created with Xilinx Vivado.
In order to simplify reproducing a bitstream from its sources and creating
corresponding depot archives, we added Vivado as a supported build system to
[https://github.com/nfeske/goa - Goa]. In particular, we leveraged the fact
that a hardware project can be exported from Vivado as a tcl script that
reproduces the project. With this approach, we only need to keep the custom
source files and omit any generated glue code.
In addition, we added support for auto-generating a _devices_manager.config_
from a hardware design. When provided with a sparse _devices_ file (mentioning
the name or type of each device), Goa tries to extract the corresponding MMIO
addresses and clock rates from the design and adds a corresponding
_devices_manager.config_ to the depot archive.
Please find detailed instructions in the Goa documentation via
! $ goa help build-systems
Pin driver and co-design tutorial
=================================
Following the lead of the Allwinner SoC, we implemented a pin driver for the
Zynq platform. Since GPIO on the Zynq may require loading of a custom bitstream
in case the FPGA's I/O pins are used, we developed and published a tutorial
for the Zybo Z7 board. This tutorial showcases a co-design workflow
demonstrating the use of the pin driver, custom hardware design with Xilinx
Vivado, bitstream generation and packaging with Goa as well as bitstream
switching at runtime.
You can find the tutorial on the new
[https://www.hackster.io/genode/ - Genode channel on hackster.io].
Hardware-accelerated graphics with Intel GEN12+ GPUs
####################################################
With our big [https://mesa3d.org - Mesa 3D] library update from version 11.2.2
to version [https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/21.08 - 21.0.0],
we also switched the Intel graphics back end from the dated DRI2/i965 to the
Gallium/Iris based graphics driver. The reason for doing so is becoming
apparent with the current Genode release. The old i965 driver does not support
newer Intel Graphics hardware and is limited to (U)HD graphics devices found,
for example, on Broadwell, Skylake, or Kabylake platforms. The new
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Xe - Intel Xe] (eXascale for
everyone = GEN12) hardware is only supported by the Iris driver and can be
found on current architectures like Tigerlake or Alderlake. Intel Xe comes
with a completely new instruction set architecture (ISA). Thanks to our switch
to Iris, most of these ISA changes are handled transparently by the Mesa
library for us. The main task for Genode was to adjust our Intel GPU
multiplexer to the new graphics-device generation.
Intel GPU-GEN12 multiplexer adjustments
=======================================
Genode's GPU multiplexer is a very low level component within the 3D graphics
stack. Technically, it handles the GPU resources (like graphics memory) and the
scheduling and execution of compiled GPU code (i.e., batch buffers) of the
graphics device. It is also responsible for providing separation of different
GPU clients, which is achieved by GPU contexts with a separate page table per
client in hardware. Also, it serves interrupts and informs the clients,
respectively the 3D applications, about progress so a client can submit the
next rendering request. For Intel Xe, there are only two changes within this
low level ISA. First, the interrupt handling registers have been improved.
It has become easier to distinguish, for example, between a display-engine
interrupt and a rendering interrupt. Since graphics cards can have many
interrupt causes, this is a useful and welcome change. Second, it is now
possible to schedule 16 instead of 4 jobs onto the GPU. While we don't take
advantage of this feature yet - we schedule one job at a time - this may come
in handy for use cases like 3D compositing. Additionally, the multiplexer has
to provide information about slices, subslices, and EUs (Execution Units) to
Mesa clients.
Stability and resource improvements
===================================
Resources need to be traded on Genode, and it is essential that the GPU
multiplexer does not pay for memory allocations or capability upgrades from
its own budget. The client has to donate these resources beforehand.
If this rule is violated, the multiplexer might run out of budget and stall
all clients. Because 3D applications can require a huge amount of resources,
this has been a challenging topic during the last release cycle, and we are
glad to announce that even sophisticated workloads are now running well on
Genode. There is still room for improvement, but the current situation is
already reassuring. Stability-wise, we have tested the updated 3D stack with
various workloads (games, browsers, VirtualBox6-3D) and did fix all issues
that we came across.
Base framework and OS-level infrastructure
##########################################
Base API changes
================
New 'Dictionary' utility
------------------------
Throughout the Genode code base, there are several places where objects are
accessed by using a name as key. To avoid the repeated manual crafting of such
data structures, we introduced a basic 'Dictionary' data structure located at
_base/include/util/dictionary.h_.
It follows the patterns of the existing 'Id_space' and 'Registry'. That is,
elements are automatically added to the dictionary at construction time,
respectively removed at destruction time. There exists a 'with_element' method
for applying a functor to one element by specifying a name as key, and a
'with_any_element' method that can be used to destruct all dictionary items.
Tightening the 'Xml_node' interface
-----------------------------------
The former 'with_sub_node' method has been renamed to 'with_optional_sub_node'
to better reflect the intention of the caller. If no sub node of the specified
type exists, the specified functor is not executed.
Use cases where a sub node is mandatory are best covered by the new
'with_sub_node' method that takes two functors as arguments, one called with
the matching sub node, and one that is called if no such sub node exists.
NIC router
==========
The NIC router now generates reports triggered by internal events
(re-configuration, link state change, etc.) asynchronously. This has the
benefit that the potentially expensive report update does not delay the event
processing that triggered the update and that a report is guaranteed to reflect
a consistent state of the router's internals.
Furthermore, if the '<report>' attribute 'link_state_triggers' is set, the
router now updates the report also whenever a network session gets constructed
or destructed. This is definitely necessary with sessions whose link state is
"up" because we should consider a non-existent session to be "down". However,
in real-world scenarios, a subscriber might want to know about the
construction and destruction of sessions that are "down" as well because one
has to be able to synchronize the lifetime of local objects that keep track of
the link states.
Besides the polishing of the report functionality, there are some improvements
related to the DHCP processing in the router. First, the router is now robust
against invalid DNS addresses in DHCP ACK packets. Next, the DHCP client
doesn't produce oversized Ethernet packets anymore. This is important in
networks with a low bandwidth. Then, the link state of a session that is bound
to the state of another domain via the '<dhcp-server>' attribute
'dns_config_from' is now correctly synchronized to whether that domain has an
IP configuration or not. And, last but not least, the DHCP server now accepts
the optimized startup sequence of clients like Debian that store their lease
persistently and directly try re-requesting it on boot-up (no DHCP DISCOVER).
These last two changes both prevent DHCP re-attempts that could cause a
significantly delayed network boot-up at applications behind the router.
Improved support for time-multiplexed GPIO pins
===============================================
Prompted by the need to enable a bit-banging I2C driver on the PinePhone,
we extended Genode's pin-driver framework introduced in version
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/21.11#Pin_I_O_session_interfaces - 21.11]
with support for the time-multiplexed operation of a pin as output or input.
To operate a pin in both directions, a driver obtains both a pin-state and a
pin-control session for the same pin. The pin-state session can be used to
sense the current pin state. The control session allows the client to set the
pin to high or low (using the 'state' method), or to set it to high-impedance
via the 'yield' method. Once switched to high-impedance, the pin can be used
as input.
Libraries and applications
##########################
Emerging Sculpt OS variant for the PinePhone
============================================
Genode on the PinePhone has come a long way, most of which is covered by the
[https://genode.org/documentation/genode-platforms-22-05.pdf - Genode Platforms]
document. Device-driver work accounts for the majority of the effort, which is
nicely wrapped up with the current release as described in
Section [PinePhone drivers for audio, camera, and power control].
With the fundamental device drivers for the PinePhone covered, we can now turn
our attention to system-integration work, ultimately raising the question of
how a Genode-based phone should best present itself to the user.
[image sculpt_pinephone_22_11]
The forthcoming phone variant of the user interface of Sculpt OS.
We take this question as an opportunity for exploration. Similarly to
how the so-called Leitzentrale of [https://genode.org/download/sculpt - Sculpt OS]
provides the user with an administrative view on the system that is separate
from the user-defined desktop runtime, we pursued the division of the phone's
UI into two faces that can be toggled with a simple touch gesture. The first
one accommodates the role of the device as a fixed-function appliance similar
to the functionality of a feature phone whereas the second one can be shaped
entirely by the user. The screenshots above give a glimpse of the user
interface of the appliance side. It covers low-level device parameters, voice
calls, establishing network connectivity, and the installation and management
of the software running on the user-defined side. One can see several cues
from Sculpt OS such as the component graph.
The clear-cut separation of the two roles of the device opens up new ways to
leverage Genode's component architecture. For example, observing that the
appliance role needs only a subset of components, we can orchestrate the
startup of the system such that those components are started first. This way,
the device's basic functions like voice calls become available in under 7
seconds when powering-on the device.
Regarding the built-in feature set, we implemented the fundamental device
functions that everyone takes for granted, like displaying the battery state,
triggering the charging when a charger gets connected, controlling the
brightness of the display, or powering down the device.
The phone variant of Sculpt OS evolves in the
[https://github.com/nfeske/genode-allwinner - genode-allwinner] repository,
specifically within the _sculpt/_ and _src/app/phone_manager/_ directories.
It can be built via the following command:
! build/arm_v8a$ make run/sculpt KERNEL=hw BOARD=pinephone SCULPT=phone
For loading the system on the PinePhone, please follow the instructions given
in the following article.
:Booting Genode on the PinePhone:
[https://genodians.org/nfeske/2021-09-20-pine-fun-pinephone-boot]
Note that the current version is still at a rather developer-focused stage.
To avoid testimonies of a prematurely released version, we decided to postpone
the release of a ready-to-use image until the feature set generally expected
from a phone is complete and well tested.
ARM virtual machine monitor
===========================
The hardware-assisted virtual machine monitor (VMM) for ARM developed for
Genode is part of the framework since release
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/15.02#Virtualization_on_ARM - 15.02].
Over the years, it got extended to support recent ARMv8 hardware, VirtIO
device models for console, network, block, and so on. Nevertheless, the given
device models, memory dimensions, and Linux specifics like initramfs size
remained hard-coded within the VMM component, and not easily configurable.
Now, the VMM accepts a configuration that enables one to define various
aspects of the virtual machine and guest OS. The VMM is still focused on Linux
OS guests though. Formerly, a pre-compiled flattened device-tree binary (DTB)
was used by the VMM to boot the Linux guest. The new version of the VMM
generates the DTB based on its own configuration.
An example configuration looks like the following:
! <config kernel_rom="linux"
! initrd_rom="initrd"
! ram_size="512M"
! cpu_count="4"
! cpu_type="arm,cortex-a53"
! gic_version="3"
! bootargs="console=hvc0">
! <virtio_device name="hvc0" type="console"/>
! <virtio_device name="eth0" type="net"/>
! <virtio_device name="hd0" type="block"/>
! </config>
The RAM size and CPU count attributes are mandatory. All other attributes are
optional and use default values. However, it is noteworthy that you should use
the correct values for the CPU type and the Generic Interrupt Controller (GIC)
version that matches your underlying hardware. Due to the usage of
hardware-dependent virtualization extensions, the VMM and guest OS should see
the correct hardware description for CPU and interrupt controller.
Seoul VMM
=========
The Seoul/Vancouver VMM - introduced to Genode with release 11.11 - is an
x86 based VMM which runs on Genode@NOVA, Genode@seL4, and Genode@Fiasco.OC on
Intel and on AMD hardware. It is used with 32-bit Linux VMs typically.
Over the last and this year, the VMM got VirtIO support with the goal to
improve the usability when used day-to-day, e.g., on Sculpt OS. Given the
observation that most Linux guests come readily (or easy to install) equipped
with VirtIO driver support, we can avoid fiddling with building or integrating
guest drivers manually. The Seoul VMM got extended by implementations for the
VirtIO input device model, VirtIO GPU device model (2D by now) and VirtIO
audio device model.
With the new input model, absolute mouse positions are supported, so that the
mouse pointer positions in Genode's Sculpt OS and in the guest VM can be kept
in sync. Beforehand, it was hardly possible when solely using the PS/2 model
using relative motion vectors.
With the new 2D GPU model, the mouse pointer shape of the guest VM can be
exported and shown by Genode's GUI multiplexer instead of the native mouse
pointer, which improves the visual impression and avoids confusion.
Additionally, with the new GPU model, resizeable and arbitrary resolution
dimension are possible, which was not feasible with the former VGA/VESA model.
The overall painting overhead is more manageable since partial updates are
supported by the device model.
The VirtIO audio model enables playback of music when streaming & surfing in
the VM, which was beforehand not possible because no audio model was
available. The new VirtIO models of the Seoul VMM were finally mapped to
Genode's GUI, input and audio-out session interfaces.
Combined, the new device models improve the overall usability when using Seoul
on Sculpt OS. Several packages of alex-ab's depot are available to get
started, ranging from a full on target Debian installation over pre-packed and
ready to use VMs to up-to-date Firefox and Thunderbird VMs based on Tiny Core
Linux. Whereas the Firefox VM is entirely disposable - as mentioned in
[https://genodians.org/alex-ab/2019-03-06-disposal-browser-vm] -
the Thunderbird VM relies on persistent storage.
Device drivers
##############
Uniform use of new platform-driver interface
============================================
In release
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/22.02#Platform_driver - 22.02],
Genode's generic platform API for all architectures got introduced and the
x86-specific platform API got deprecated. However, at that point, all
x86-based device drivers still used the deprecated API and the deprecated
platform driver. With this release, all device drivers are now reworked to use
the generic platform API, and driver. The deprecated platform driver and API
have been removed.
To make all previous scenarios work again, several changes were necessary. The
changes - especially concerning the _pci_decode_ and _platform_drv_
components - are described in the following.
PCI decoder
-----------
The PCI decoder, introduced in release
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/22.05#Platform_driver - 22.05],
consumes ACPI information delivered by the ACPI driver and additional platform
information from the core component. It uses this information to find and scan
PCI buses for devices and their capabilities. Finally, it creates a report
about all PCI devices found.
While using more and more device drivers with the generic platform driver and
PCI decoder, we realized that on some platforms, not all PCI bridges are
necessarily enabled, which leaves the devices behind such a bridge unusable.
This is now fixed by enabling all PCI bridges.
The information about reserved memory regions for PCI devices is already used
in the boot process, e.g., memory for video graphic cards is discovered by the
ACPI driver. However, the PCI decoder did not yet offer this information in
its devices report. Therefore, the platform driver did not know about the
reserved memory, and could not set up an IOMMU appropriately. From now on,
the PCI decoder reports such memory regions as follows.
! <device name="00:02.0" type="pci">
! ...
! <reserved_memory address="0xdd000000" size="0x2800000"/>
! </device>
The PCI memory _Base Address Registers_ (BARs) provide information about
pre-fetchable memory. This information is now additionally exported by the PCI
decoder and can be used by the platform driver (see the next section for
details). The information is presented in the following form:
! <device name="00:02.0" type="pci">
! ...
! <io_mem pci_bar="2" address="0xe0000000" size="0x10000000" prefetchable="true"/>
! </device>
Currently, the PCI decoder decides about the type of interrupt which can be
used for a PCI device. The background is that several kernels, like OKL4,
do not support the use of _Message-Signaled-Interrupts_ (MSI) or MSI-X. Older
kernels, like Pistachio, do not even support the I/O _Advanced Programmable_
_Interrupt Controller_ (IOAPIC), and are even more limited regarding available
interrupt pins.
On kernels that support all kinds of interrupts, devices with support for MSI
or MSI-X were reported to prefer MSI-X. However, in rare cases we observed
problems with the WiFi driver on MSI-X capable hardware. Therefore, we switch
the priority of reporting MSI over MSI-X if both are available.
In addition, we experienced problems with some Intel HDAUDIO cards and MSIs.
Therefore, we do not report the MSI capability on those devices for the
time being.
Platform driver
---------------
The generic platform driver got re-worked to support the newly provided
information from the PCI decoder. The given reserved memory regions of a
device are used to add corresponding entries in the IOMMU.
The new "prefetchable" attribute for corresponding I/O memory regions -
typically only "stolen memory" of the video graphics card - is used to decide
when I/O memory can be mapped as write-combined into the address space of the
client. Now that the platform driver decides for which I/O memory these
special paging attributes are sensible to use, the actual driver no longer
needs to distinguish special paging attributes for I/O memory.
Therefore, we removed those details from the 'io_mem' call.
PCI devices on x86 without MSI or MSI-X support may still share the same
interrupt line. To make the generic platform driver functional on these
platforms, we had to add shared interrupt support. When the platform driver
receives its devices report, it iterates over all devices and their interrupt
resources, and detects any shared interrupts. For those interrupts, the
platform driver provides a custom IRQ service, thereby realizing the sharing.
For all other interrupts, it hands out the IRQ capability as obtained from
core directly.
The generic platform driver can now set up MSI-X within the PCI configuration
space of a device, if the devices ROM instructs it to do so.
The ability to power and reset PCI devices was also missing in the generic
platform driver so far. We caught up on implementing this feature.
Several PCI enablement quirks are needed for correctly running devices and
drivers. Especially the hand-off of devices in between BIOS/UEFI and OS are an
example for this. We encountered problems when doing this too late. Therefore,
we moved the PCI quirks from the moment of first usage to the startup of the
platform driver. Moreover, PCI quirks for EHCI and HDAUDIO were added.
VirtIO PCI devices hide several important information about their queues inside
the PCI configuration space. Now that we do not provide direct access to the
PCI configuration space to device drivers, the platform driver needs to
identify VirtIO devices, and provide the necessary information via the devices
ROM to the driver. It does so in the following way:
! <device ...>
! <pci-config ...>
! ...
! <virtio_range type="notify" index="1" offset="0x200" size="0x100"/>
! </pci-config>
! </device>
Sometimes a device driver is needed to set up a device but doesn't necessarily
need to stay present while the device is active. The PCIe host controller for
the i.MX 8MQ SoC described in
Section [New PCI and network drivers for NXP i.MX] is such an example.
To be able to destruct a platform resp. single device session at the platform
driver without automatically powering it off or resetting it, we introduced
the "leave_operational" attribute. As the name suggests, it leaves a device
untouched when its session gets closed. The attribute is part of the policy
node for the client within the platform driver's configuration.
Platform driver for PC hardware
-------------------------------
The vanished and deprecated x86-specific platform driver was able to reset a
machine via I/O port access. It did so upon observing the 'state' attribute of
the system ROM having the value "reset".
This feature is mainly used within Sculpt OS. To not lose this ability,
a platform driver specific to PCs is now part of the _repos/pc_ repository.
It shares all code and semantics with the generic platform driver, but adds
this single functionality.
Platform API clients
--------------------
All remaining x86-centered device drivers got reworked to use the generic
platform API and its helper utilities in _platform_session/device.h_ and
_platform_session/dma_buffer.h_.
The lx_kit and lx_emul layers within the _repos/dde_linux_ repository now use
one and the same generic layer too. While reworking these libraries, we
addressed a performance penalty in the interrupt handling. The multiple
opening and closing of interrupt sessions is now eliminated.
Moreover, we removed the legacy_pc_usb_host_drv from _repos/dde_linux_.
All run-scripts and packages were revised to use the new drivers.
PinePhone drivers for audio, camera, and power control
======================================================
Over the past 18 months, we have steadily expanded the base of device drivers
for the PinePhone, initially addressing the
[https://genodians.org/nfeske/2021-12-21-pine-fun-display - display] and
[https://genodians.org/nfeske/2022-03-16-pine-fun-touchscreen - touchscreen],
later covering the
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/22.02#PinePhone_modem_access - modem],
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/22.05#Custom_system-control_processor__SCP__firmware - system control],
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/22.08#GPU_and_Mesa_driver_for_Mali-400 - GPU], and
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/22.08#SD-card_driver_for_the_PinePhone - SD-card].
With the current release, we wrap up this line of work with drivers for
audio, camera, and power control.
As a prerequisite step for enabling the camera, we changed the version of the
Linux kernel that we use as donor of the driver code. Up to now, we relied on
the vanilla Linux kernel for the Allwinner SoC. However, the camera support
still resides on [https://xnux.eu - Ondrej Jirman's] custom kernel
(orange-pi-5.14), which is apparently the kernel of choice for most Linux
distributions for the PinePhone. We follow suit.
Audio
-----
The added audio support consists of two separate components, namely an
audio-control driver and audio in/out driver. The former controls the audio
routing and mixing on the hardware level. It is responsible to route the mic
to the modem during voice call, control the gain, or enable/disable the
speaker. The privacy-sensitive audio-control driver is meant to be part of the
base system of Sculpt. It operates according to its configuration, which can
be updated dynamically.
Volumes can be configured by nodes within the '<config>' node using a volume
attribute (range 0-100) where 0 implies turning off the input or output
device. Supported nodes are '<mic>', '<speaker>', and '<earpiece>'.
Furthermore, a '<codec>' node can be used to switch the audio path between the
modem and the ARM application processor (SoC). Its 'target' attribute can be
set to either "soc" (default) or "modem". The "soc" mode implicitly sets the
codec's sample rate to 44.1 KHz whereas "modem" mode sets the sample rate to
48 KHz. This distinction is required because the modem is compatible with 8
KHz only. The modem's 8 KHz can be cleanly converted to 48 KHz.
In contrast to the audio-control driver, the audio in/out driver is concerned
with streaming PCM audio data to/from the ARM application processor. It allows
audio applications hosted in the user-defined runtime of Sculpt OS to record
and play audio via Genode's audio-in and audio-out session interfaces.
The combination of both drivers can be exercised via the
[https://github.com/genodelabs/genode-allwinner/blob/master/run/audio_pinephone.run - audio_pinephone.run]
script.
Power control
-------------
The new power-control driver is based on our custom firmware for the A64's
system-control processor (SCP) in combination with Genode's dedicated
scp-session interface that allows Genode components to interact with the SCP.
To properly arbitrate the access to the power-management IC (PMIC) between the
SCP firmware and the ARM application processor, the PMIC driver has been moved
entirely to the SCP side. This way, both the SCP firmware and Genode-based SCP
clients become able to safely access the PMIC without stepping on each other's
toes. In particular, the platform driver acts as an SCP client to toggle power
controls. Since the platform driver now depends on the SCP, we co-located the
formerly separate SCP driver component with the platform driver.
Built upon this infrastructure, a new power driver exercises control over
several low-level aspects of the PinePhone hardware such as:
* Platform reboot (via the PMIC),
* Powering down the system (via the PMIC),
* Switching between the power profiles "performance" and "economic",
which clock the ARM CPU at 1296 MHz and 816 MHz respectively,
* Reporting the remaining battery capacity, power draw, or charge current,
* Triggering the charging when connecting a charger, and
* Adjusting the backlight brightness.
Besides being integrated in Sculpt OS, the driver can be exercised in
isolation using the
[https://github.com/genodelabs/genode-allwinner/blob/master/run/power_pinephone.run - power_pinephone.run]
script.
Camera
------
The added camera driver component consists of a port of the Linux SUN6I-CSI as
well as OV5640 and GC2145 drivers. It renders the captured camera image data
into a GUI session according to the following configuration attributes.
The 'camera' attribute selects the camera. Supported values as "front" and
"rear". The 'width' and 'height' attributes select the horizontal and vertical
resolution. Valid configurations are 640x480 as well as 1280x720. The 'fps'
attribute selects the capture rate of the camera. Valid values are "15" and
"30". The 'format' attribute selects the capture format. The only valid value
is "yuv", which selects YUV420. The 'convert' attribute specifies if the
captured image data is converted to the pixel format suitable for the GUI
display. Default is "true". The 'rotate' attribute specifies if the capture
image data is rotated counter-clockwise and flipped. Default is 'true'.
The integration of the driver is exemplified by the
[https://github.com/genodelabs/genode-allwinner/blob/master/run/camera_pinephone.run - camera_pinephone.run] script.
The test scenario displays the camera image on the framebuffer. It repeatedly
switches between front and rear camera.
New PCI and network drivers for NXP i.MX
========================================
PCIe host controller for i.MX 8MQ
---------------------------------
The i.MX 8MQ SoC includes two PCI-express host controllers. The MNT Reform 2
laptop for example exposes both via one M.2 and one miniPCIe socket, e.g., to
drive an NVMe card and a WiFi card. In contrast to x86-based PCs, those PCIe
controllers are not set up by boot-firmware like BIOS or UEFI, but need to be
driven by the OS first. Therefore, this release contains a new PCIe driver for
the mentioned SoC. This driver does not provide a special API. It uses the
platform driver to obtain the device resources of the PCIe controller, and
enables and configures it appropriately. It then parses the PCI configuration
space of the device behind the controller, which in fact acts as PCI host
bridge. The collected device and PCI information is then exposed via the
report service analogously to the PCI decode component available for x86.
Finally, the platform driver resp. another incarnation of the platform driver
can consume this report as devices ROM, and provide the device resources to a
driver of the PCI device.
In practice, we have tested the PCIe host controller driver in combination
with an NVMe card used in the MNT Reform 2 laptop only. Moreover, it got
integrated in Sculpt OS for the MNT Reform 2. Therefore, we had to add an
i.MX 8MQ specific driver manager. This management component is able to check
for the availability of an NVMe device, controls the driver's lifetime, and
assembles a block-device report that covers both SD-card and NVMe devices.
FEC Network driver
------------------
There is long-standing support for the _Freescale Ethernet Controller_ (FEC)
within Genode available, supporting a broad range of SoCs from i.MX 53 up to
i.MX 8.
But the existing driver port taken from Linux 4.16.3 was running shakily on
the i.MX 8MQ SoC and the i.MX 6 Sabrelite board. Instead of trying to
investigate potentially violated semantics in the legacy DDE Linux emulation
code, we ported the Linux device driver for FEC from scratch. Thereby, we've
used the recent DDE Linux porting approach, first described in the
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/21.08#Linux-device-driver_environment_re-imagined - 21.08]
release.
The new driver is based on the vanilla Linux kernel 5.11 plus the MNT Reform 2
patches provided by Lukas Hartmann, which we already use for other drivers
available in the genode-imx repository.
To enable the driver to work correctly, it needs information about its clock
frequencies. Therefore, we have extended the platform driver for i.MX 53, and
introduced new rudimentary platform drivers specific to i.MX 6 and 7, which
expose the needed clock frequencies.
USB-C on i.MX 8MQ EVK
---------------------
The USB host controller driver for the i.MX 8MQ EVK board did not enable the
second USB host controller yet, which is connected to the USB-C socket of the
board. Now this host controller gets driven too.
Intel graphics
==============
The Intel display driver was enabled to run on Intel Alderlake graphics PCs,
tested on the 12th Gen
[https://frame.work/de/en/products/laptop-12-gen-intel - Framework Laptop].
Furthermore, the driver now supports 4K displays, tested specifically on Dell
Ultrasharp and LG 27MU67 hardware. Additionally, the driver may now be
configured to set up an upper resolution bound to avoid out-of-service
exceptions due to unexpectedly high memory needs. This feature is used by
default on Sculpt to limit resolutions to WQHD aka 1440p aka 2560x1440 pixels
and can be changed in _repos/gems/sculpt/fb_drv/default_.
Audio driver updated to OpenBSD 7.1
===================================
We updated the audio-driver component to OpenBSD version 7.1 that brings in
support for playback on more recent 12th Gen Intel machines. Besides the
update, we remedied a long-standing shortcoming when handling multiple
HD-Audio devices and removed the support for old audio devices.
The component contained a simple check to exclude known non-working devices
but depending on the machine's configuration, this check was incomplete. Rather
than extending the check, we took a step back and changed the probing
behavior of the component:
![init -> audio_drv] azalia0 [8086:160c]
![init -> audio_drv] :
![init -> audio_drv] azalia0: no supported codecs
![init -> audio_drv] azalia1 [8086:9ca0]
![init -> audio_drv] :
![init -> audio_drv] azalia1: codecs: Realtek ALC292
![init -> audio_drv] audio0 at azalia1
It now checks all available devices and picks the first one it can use. This
comes in handy in configurations where the virtual PCI-bus is populated with
all audio devices found in a machine and some of them contain unsupported
codecs as, among others, found on GPUs.
Furthermore, we decided to remove the _eap_ and _auich_ drivers as these
drivers rely on I/O port access, which still had to be enabled in the
component after the switch to the new platform driver and due to being of
minor importance in daily use. The first one was mainly used to initially
develop the component and later on for testing in QEMU. The second one on the
other hand was merely enabled to provide a shot at getting audio in VirtualBox
VMs where the component did not work with the HDA device model at the time.
Improved ACPICA driver
======================
The ACPICA driver got improved support for Thinkpad notebooks to report ACPI
events and in particular battery state changes. The frequency of checking of
state changes, which are not triggered by an ACPI event, can now be configured
explicitly, which is documented in the README file of the component.
Additionally, the ACPICA component got extended to support ACPI suspend &
resume functionality. On the one hand the component can be configured to
determine and report the supported ACPI sleep states (S1-S5) of a PC machine.
On the other hand, the component can now react on 'system' ROM changes and
participate on sleep state preparation and the subsequent wakeup procedure
using the ACPICA library, e.g., AcpiEnterSleepStatePrep,
AcpiLeaveSleepStatePrep and AcpiLeaveSleepState.
Wireless-networking improvements
================================
In the process of enabling the Intel AX211 WiFi card, DDE-Linux and the WiFi
driver were enhanced to support loading PNVM firmware files. Ultimately, a
[https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-linux-kernel/commit/5fcfe0f19ed5ff2bd3514644afce0af642c326c6 - workaround]
from QubesOS was needed to make the card work, highlighting shared challenges
that both our projects face when using Linux drivers in unconventional ways to
improve system security.
Platforms
#########
Low-level mechanism for suspend/resume on PC platforms
======================================================
On modern PC platforms, suspend and resume is realized by using a mechanism
provided by ACPI. The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface defines
(besides many other things) several global states (Gx) and six sleep states (Sx)
an operating system (OS) can choose. Oversimplified, the S0 state is the
normal working state, S1-S2 are light sleeping states, S3 is known as
"suspend to RAM" state, S4 is called "suspend to disk" and S5 is mostly "off".
See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACPI#OSPM_responsibilities] for a basic
overview and further pointers for reading.
The supported sleep states vary between PCs, some of which do not even support
all states. An operating system has to look up and determine the supported Sx
states, which are part of ACPI tables and ACPI AML code. Beginning with this
Genode release, we can use the ACPICA driver to lookup the supported Sx
states. The sleep states themselves are represented as two values (TYP_SLPa
and TYP_SLPb in ACPI specification) and are reported by the ACPICA driver.
In order to trigger/program the intended sleep state, an OS like Genode + used
kernel has to look up and set up several ACPI tables, e.g., FACS & FADT. Via
the tables, the OS deposits a wakeup vector, which is called by the UEFI
firmware on wakeup. Before actually going to sleep, the OS has to take care to
flush all kinds of hardware cached state either to memory or persistence
storage, depending on the Sx state.
With this release, we added principal support for S3 "suspend to RAM" in
Genode using the NOVA kernel. The kernel now supports a privileged suspend
syscall, which is solely available to Genode's core roottask. The invocation
is triggered and guarded by Genode's 'Pd::managing_system' RPC function, which
takes both TYP_SLPa and TYP_SLPb values as parameters representing the
intended Sx state. On invocation, Genode's core will check that the component
holds Genode's managing-system capability. On success, the suspend syscall of
the NOVA kernel is invoked and will lead to holding all CPUs, depositing the
wakeup vector in the ACPI tables, flushing cached state of Genode's components
to memory, like CPU registers, FPU state, IO-APIC state and virtualization
state of Intel' VMX or AMD's SVM. Finally, both TYP_SLP values will be used to
trigger the sleep state.
On ACPI wakeup, the UEFI/BIOS firmware wakes up the NOVA kernel via the
deposited wakeup vector. The kernel re-initializes the CPU and wakes up all
other CPUs. Finally, control will be transferred to Genode's roottask (core),
which can thereby return from the 'Pd::managing_system' RPC call.
Before and after the actual suspend and resume, the ACPICA driver should
be used to run ACPI AML methods to prepare and post-process the system state
change, which may affect the success of the Sx state transfer depending on the
used PC platform. Additionally, after resume, all hardware and their drivers
must be considered to be re-initialized. The re-initialization and re-starting
of drivers and hardware, e.g., PCI, is not finished currently.
An early prototype for exercising this scenario is available in the form of
the _acpi_suspend.run_ script in the _libports_ repository. This test scenario
periodically suspends and resumes the hardware and also restarts the used
display driver. The low level ACPI suspend and resume can be observed to work
quite reliable, which we could validate across several generations of Intel
notebooks and some AMD desktop machines. However, the re-starting of the
display driver is not always reliable. Restarting the Intel display driver
worked notably well on older Thinkpad notebooks, e.g., X201 and T420.
Note that the suspend/resume feature is still work in progress. The next
potential work items are the addition of suspend/resume support to the base-hw
kernel, ways to power-off and power-on (PCI) hardware, e.g.,via the new
platform driver, and re-initializing and/or re-starting drivers. Additionally,
a convenient way to debug resume issues is desired when no serial output is
working anymore after resume.
Base-HW microkernel
===================
The base-hw kernel, which was specifically developed for Genode, did not
provide the use of _Message-Signaled-Interrupts_ (MSI), and MSI-X yet. With
this release, x86 architectural support for MSI and MSI-X entered the base-hw
kernel. The usage of MSI or legacy interrupts is transparent to the user. It
gets determined in the interplay of the PCI decode component, platform driver,
and core.
NOVA microhypervisor
====================
Besides the added ACPI suspend/resume support described in
Section [Low-level mechanism for suspend/resume on PC platforms], the kernel
received principal support to run on more than 32 CPUs. By default, Genode's
and the kernel's CPU limit is set to 64, configurable by the constants
MAX_SUPPORTED_CPUS in Genode's core respectively NUM_CPU in the kernel.
In our tests, up to 250 CPUs were usable in Qemu.
Build system and tools
######################
Streamlined building of libraries
=================================
The release adds special handling for 'lib/<libname>' arguments to the build
system, which supersedes the former 'LIB=<libname>' mechanism. Whereas the old
mechanism was limited to a single library, the new convention allows multiple
library arguments, similar to regular targets.
The change brings two immediate benefits. First, the streamlining of library
and target arguments allows for the building of libraries via the 'build'
command of the run tool. Second, it alleviates the need for pseudo _target.mk_
files for building shared libraries that have no direct dependencies, in
particular VFS plugins.
Note that _target.mk_ files located under _src/lib/_ are no longer reachable.
Therefore, all run scripts that used to trigger the build of a shared library
via a pseudo target must be adapted. E.g., 'build lib/vfs/tap' must be
replaced by 'build lib/vfs_tap'.
The former 'LIB=<libname>' option is no longer supported.
Boot-loading over HTTP
======================
The standard network-boot approach for x86 at Genode Labs has been a
combination of the PC-integrated Preboot Execution Environment (PXE), the
Pulsar boot loader, and the TFTP protocol for years. Because Pulsar is tied
to legacy BIOS interfaces, UEFI-only hardware demands for alternatives. iPXE
is a field-tested, UEFI-compatible alternative that is already supported in
Genode's run tool via _load/ipxe_.
One of the prominent features of iPXE is the support for additional network
(boot) protocols beyond TFTP with HTTP as a tempting option to improve boot
performance. This release enhances the _load/ipxe_ run module to optionally
configure and spawn the lightweight HTTP server _lighttpd_ to serve the boot
image to iPXE using the following declarations in _etc/build.conf_.
! RUN_OPT += --include load/ipxe
! RUN_OPT += --load-ipxe-base-dir /tftpboot
! RUN_OPT += --load-ipxe-boot-dir /ipxe
! RUN_OPT += --load-ipxe-lighttpd
! RUN_OPT += --load-ipxe-lighttpd-port 2209
The HTTP server is run only while the run tool is executed, killed on exit,
and limited to serve the contents of the test-specific directory under
_var/run/_ in your build directory. Your iPXE boot loader should be configured
to chain the automatically generated _boot.cfg_ file as follows.
! #!ipxe
! chain http://<host ip address>:2209/boot.cfg
For more details, please refer to the dedicated Genodians.org article.
:Getting Fujitsu U7411 up and running - Network Boot:
[https://genodians.org/chelmuth/2022-11-24-u7411-up-and-running]
Configurable Intel HWP mode
===========================
We updated our version of the Bender chain-boot loader to be configurable
regarding the mode in which to run Intel's Hardware P-States (HWP). When
running Genode on NOVA, the HWP mode can now be controlled via the new run
option '--bender-intel-hwp-mode'. The option responds to the values 'off',
'performance', 'balanced', and 'power_saving'. The default value is
'performance' in order to stay backwards compatible. On kernels other than
NOVA, HWP remains turned off in general.
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