1 .. Copyright 2001 Matthew Wilcox
3 .. This documentation is free software; you can redistribute
4 .. it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
5 .. License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
6 .. version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
9 ===============================
10 Bus-Independent Device Accesses
11 ===============================
13 :Author: Matthew Wilcox
19 Linux provides an API which abstracts performing IO across all busses
20 and devices, allowing device drivers to be written independently of bus
26 Getting Access to the Device
27 ----------------------------
29 The most widely supported form of IO is memory mapped IO. That is, a
30 part of the CPU's address space is interpreted not as accesses to
31 memory, but as accesses to a device. Some architectures define devices
32 to be at a fixed address, but most have some method of discovering
33 devices. The PCI bus walk is a good example of such a scheme. This
34 document does not cover how to receive such an address, but assumes you
35 are starting with one. Physical addresses are of type unsigned long.
37 This address should not be used directly. Instead, to get an address
38 suitable for passing to the accessor functions described below, you
39 should call ioremap(). An address suitable for accessing
40 the device will be returned to you.
42 After you've finished using the device (say, in your module's exit
43 routine), call iounmap() in order to return the address
44 space to the kernel. Most architectures allocate new address space each
45 time you call ioremap(), and they can run out unless you
51 The part of the interface most used by drivers is reading and writing
52 memory-mapped registers on the device. Linux provides interfaces to read
53 and write 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit quantities. Due to a
54 historical accident, these are named byte, word, long and quad accesses.
55 Both read and write accesses are supported; there is no prefetch support
58 The functions are named readb(), readw(), readl(), readq(),
59 readb_relaxed(), readw_relaxed(), readl_relaxed(), readq_relaxed(),
60 writeb(), writew(), writel() and writeq().
62 Some devices (such as framebuffers) would like to use larger transfers than
63 8 bytes at a time. For these devices, the memcpy_toio(),
64 memcpy_fromio() and memset_io() functions are
65 provided. Do not use memset or memcpy on IO addresses; they are not
66 guaranteed to copy data in order.
68 The read and write functions are defined to be ordered. That is the
69 compiler is not permitted to reorder the I/O sequence. When the ordering
70 can be compiler optimised, you can use __readb() and friends to
71 indicate the relaxed ordering. Use this with care.
73 While the basic functions are defined to be synchronous with respect to
74 each other and ordered with respect to each other the busses the devices
75 sit on may themselves have asynchronicity. In particular many authors
76 are burned by the fact that PCI bus writes are posted asynchronously. A
77 driver author must issue a read from the same device to ensure that
78 writes have occurred in the specific cases the author cares. This kind
79 of property cannot be hidden from driver writers in the API. In some
80 cases, the read used to flush the device may be expected to fail (if the
81 card is resetting, for example). In that case, the read should be done
82 from config space, which is guaranteed to soft-fail if the card doesn't
85 The following is an example of flushing a write to a device when the
86 driver would like to ensure the write's effects are visible prior to
87 continuing execution::
90 qla1280_disable_intrs(struct scsi_qla_host *ha)
92 struct device_reg *reg;
95 /* disable risc and host interrupts */
96 WRT_REG_WORD(®->ictrl, 0);
98 * The following read will ensure that the above write
99 * has been received by the device before we return from this
102 RD_REG_WORD(®->ictrl);
103 ha->flags.ints_enabled = 0;
106 PCI ordering rules also guarantee that PIO read responses arrive after any
107 outstanding DMA writes from that bus, since for some devices the result of
108 a readb() call may signal to the driver that a DMA transaction is
109 complete. In many cases, however, the driver may want to indicate that the
110 next readb() call has no relation to any previous DMA writes
111 performed by the device. The driver can use readb_relaxed() for
112 these cases, although only some platforms will honor the relaxed
113 semantics. Using the relaxed read functions will provide significant
114 performance benefits on platforms that support it. The qla2xxx driver
115 provides examples of how to use readX_relaxed(). In many cases, a majority
116 of the driver's readX() calls can safely be converted to readX_relaxed()
117 calls, since only a few will indicate or depend on DMA completion.
125 Another form of IO commonly supported is Port Space. This is a range of
126 addresses separate to the normal memory address space. Access to these
127 addresses is generally not as fast as accesses to the memory mapped
128 addresses, and it also has a potentially smaller address space.
130 Unlike memory mapped IO, no preparation is required to access port
136 Accesses to this space are provided through a set of functions which
137 allow 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit accesses; also known as byte, word and
138 long. These functions are inb(), inw(),
139 inl(), outb(), outw() and
142 Some variants are provided for these functions. Some devices require
143 that accesses to their ports are slowed down. This functionality is
144 provided by appending a ``_p`` to the end of the function.
145 There are also equivalents to memcpy. The ins() and
146 outs() functions copy bytes, words or longs to the given
149 __iomem pointer tokens
150 ======================
152 The data type for an MMIO address is an ``__iomem`` qualified pointer, such as
153 ``void __iomem *reg``. On most architectures it is a regular pointer that
154 points to a virtual memory address and can be offset or dereferenced, but in
155 portable code, it must only be passed from and to functions that explicitly
156 operated on an ``__iomem`` token, in particular the ioremap() and
157 readl()/writel() functions. The 'sparse' semantic code checker can be used to
158 verify that this is done correctly.
160 While on most architectures, ioremap() creates a page table entry for an
161 uncached virtual address pointing to the physical MMIO address, some
162 architectures require special instructions for MMIO, and the ``__iomem`` pointer
163 just encodes the physical address or an offsettable cookie that is interpreted
166 Differences between I/O access functions
167 ========================================
169 readq(), readl(), readw(), readb(), writeq(), writel(), writew(), writeb()
171 These are the most generic accessors, providing serialization against other
172 MMIO accesses and DMA accesses as well as fixed endianness for accessing
173 little-endian PCI devices and on-chip peripherals. Portable device drivers
174 should generally use these for any access to ``__iomem`` pointers.
176 Note that posted writes are not strictly ordered against a spinlock, see
177 Documentation/driver-api/io_ordering.rst.
179 readq_relaxed(), readl_relaxed(), readw_relaxed(), readb_relaxed(),
180 writeq_relaxed(), writel_relaxed(), writew_relaxed(), writeb_relaxed()
182 On architectures that require an expensive barrier for serializing against
183 DMA, these "relaxed" versions of the MMIO accessors only serialize against
184 each other, but contain a less expensive barrier operation. A device driver
185 might use these in a particularly performance sensitive fast path, with a
186 comment that explains why the usage in a specific location is safe without
189 See memory-barriers.txt for a more detailed discussion on the precise ordering
190 guarantees of the non-relaxed and relaxed versions.
192 ioread64(), ioread32(), ioread16(), ioread8(),
193 iowrite64(), iowrite32(), iowrite16(), iowrite8()
195 These are an alternative to the normal readl()/writel() functions, with almost
196 identical behavior, but they can also operate on ``__iomem`` tokens returned
197 for mapping PCI I/O space with pci_iomap() or ioport_map(). On architectures
198 that require special instructions for I/O port access, this adds a small
199 overhead for an indirect function call implemented in lib/iomap.c, while on
200 other architectures, these are simply aliases.
202 ioread64be(), ioread32be(), ioread16be()
203 iowrite64be(), iowrite32be(), iowrite16be()
205 These behave in the same way as the ioread32()/iowrite32() family, but with
206 reversed byte order, for accessing devices with big-endian MMIO registers.
207 Device drivers that can operate on either big-endian or little-endian
208 registers may have to implement a custom wrapper function that picks one or
209 the other depending on which device was found.
211 Note: On some architectures, the normal readl()/writel() functions
212 traditionally assume that devices are the same endianness as the CPU, while
213 using a hardware byte-reverse on the PCI bus when running a big-endian kernel.
214 Drivers that use readl()/writel() this way are generally not portable, but
215 tend to be limited to a particular SoC.
217 hi_lo_readq(), lo_hi_readq(), hi_lo_readq_relaxed(), lo_hi_readq_relaxed(),
218 ioread64_lo_hi(), ioread64_hi_lo(), ioread64be_lo_hi(), ioread64be_hi_lo(),
219 hi_lo_writeq(), lo_hi_writeq(), hi_lo_writeq_relaxed(), lo_hi_writeq_relaxed(),
220 iowrite64_lo_hi(), iowrite64_hi_lo(), iowrite64be_lo_hi(), iowrite64be_hi_lo()
222 Some device drivers have 64-bit registers that cannot be accessed atomically
223 on 32-bit architectures but allow two consecutive 32-bit accesses instead.
224 Since it depends on the particular device which of the two halves has to be
225 accessed first, a helper is provided for each combination of 64-bit accessors
226 with either low/high or high/low word ordering. A device driver must include
227 either <linux/io-64-nonatomic-lo-hi.h> or <linux/io-64-nonatomic-hi-lo.h> to
228 get the function definitions along with helpers that redirect the normal
229 readq()/writeq() to them on architectures that do not provide 64-bit access
232 __raw_readq(), __raw_readl(), __raw_readw(), __raw_readb(),
233 __raw_writeq(), __raw_writel(), __raw_writew(), __raw_writeb()
235 These are low-level MMIO accessors without barriers or byteorder changes and
236 architecture specific behavior. Accesses are usually atomic in the sense that
237 a four-byte __raw_readl() does not get split into individual byte loads, but
238 multiple consecutive accesses can be combined on the bus. In portable code, it
239 is only safe to use these to access memory behind a device bus but not MMIO
240 registers, as there are no ordering guarantees with regard to other MMIO
241 accesses or even spinlocks. The byte order is generally the same as for normal
242 memory, so unlike the other functions, these can be used to copy data between
243 kernel memory and device memory.
245 inl(), inw(), inb(), outl(), outw(), outb()
247 PCI I/O port resources traditionally require separate helpers as they are
248 implemented using special instructions on the x86 architecture. On most other
249 architectures, these are mapped to readl()/writel() style accessors
250 internally, usually pointing to a fixed area in virtual memory. Instead of an
251 ``__iomem`` pointer, the address is a 32-bit integer token to identify a port
252 number. PCI requires I/O port access to be non-posted, meaning that an outb()
253 must complete before the following code executes, while a normal writeb() may
254 still be in progress. On architectures that correctly implement this, I/O port
255 access is therefore ordered against spinlocks. Many non-x86 PCI host bridge
256 implementations and CPU architectures however fail to implement non-posted I/O
257 space on PCI, so they can end up being posted on such hardware.
259 In some architectures, the I/O port number space has a 1:1 mapping to
260 ``__iomem`` pointers, but this is not recommended and device drivers should
261 not rely on that for portability. Similarly, an I/O port number as described
262 in a PCI base address register may not correspond to the port number as seen
263 by a device driver. Portable drivers need to read the port number for the
264 resource provided by the kernel.
266 There are no direct 64-bit I/O port accessors, but pci_iomap() in combination
267 with ioread64/iowrite64 can be used instead.
269 inl_p(), inw_p(), inb_p(), outl_p(), outw_p(), outb_p()
271 On ISA devices that require specific timing, the _p versions of the I/O
272 accessors add a small delay. On architectures that do not have ISA buses,
273 these are aliases to the normal inb/outb helpers.
275 readsq, readsl, readsw, readsb
276 writesq, writesl, writesw, writesb
277 ioread64_rep, ioread32_rep, ioread16_rep, ioread8_rep
278 iowrite64_rep, iowrite32_rep, iowrite16_rep, iowrite8_rep
279 insl, insw, insb, outsl, outsw, outsb
281 These are helpers that access the same address multiple times, usually to copy
282 data between kernel memory byte stream and a FIFO buffer. Unlike the normal
283 MMIO accessors, these do not perform a byteswap on big-endian kernels, so the
284 first byte in the FIFO register corresponds to the first byte in the memory
285 buffer regardless of the architecture.
287 Device memory mapping modes
288 ===========================
290 Some architectures support multiple modes for mapping device memory.
291 ioremap_*() variants provide a common abstraction around these
292 architecture-specific modes, with a shared set of semantics.
294 ioremap() is the most common mapping type, and is applicable to typical device
295 memory (e.g. I/O registers). Other modes can offer weaker or stronger
296 guarantees, if supported by the architecture. From most to least common, they
302 The default mode, suitable for most memory-mapped devices, e.g. control
303 registers. Memory mapped using ioremap() has the following characteristics:
305 * Uncached - CPU-side caches are bypassed, and all reads and writes are handled
306 directly by the device
307 * No speculative operations - the CPU may not issue a read or write to this
308 memory, unless the instruction that does so has been reached in committed
310 * No reordering - The CPU may not reorder accesses to this memory mapping with
311 respect to each other. On some architectures, this relies on barriers in
312 readl_relaxed()/writel_relaxed().
313 * No repetition - The CPU may not issue multiple reads or writes for a single
315 * No write-combining - Each I/O operation results in one discrete read or write
316 being issued to the device, and multiple writes are not combined into larger
317 writes. This may or may not be enforced when using __raw I/O accessors or
318 pointer dereferences.
319 * Non-executable - The CPU is not allowed to speculate instruction execution
320 from this memory (it probably goes without saying, but you're also not
321 allowed to jump into device memory).
323 On many platforms and buses (e.g. PCI), writes issued through ioremap()
324 mappings are posted, which means that the CPU does not wait for the write to
325 actually reach the target device before retiring the write instruction.
327 On many platforms, I/O accesses must be aligned with respect to the access
328 size; failure to do so will result in an exception or unpredictable results.
333 Maps I/O memory as normal memory with write combining. Unlike ioremap(),
335 * The CPU may speculatively issue reads from the device that the program
336 didn't actually execute, and may choose to basically read whatever it wants.
337 * The CPU may reorder operations as long as the result is consistent from the
338 program's point of view.
339 * The CPU may write to the same location multiple times, even when the program
340 issued a single write.
341 * The CPU may combine several writes into a single larger write.
343 This mode is typically used for video framebuffers, where it can increase
344 performance of writes. It can also be used for other blocks of memory in
345 devices (e.g. buffers or shared memory), but care must be taken as accesses are
346 not guaranteed to be ordered with respect to normal ioremap() MMIO register
347 accesses without explicit barriers.
349 On a PCI bus, it is usually safe to use ioremap_wc() on MMIO areas marked as
350 ``IORESOURCE_PREFETCH``, but it may not be used on those without the flag.
351 For on-chip devices, there is no corresponding flag, but a driver can use
352 ioremap_wc() on a device that is known to be safe.
357 Maps I/O memory as normal memory with write-through caching. Like ioremap_wc(),
360 * The CPU may cache writes issued to and reads from the device, and serve reads
363 This mode is sometimes used for video framebuffers, where drivers still expect
364 writes to reach the device in a timely manner (and not be stuck in the CPU
365 cache), but reads may be served from the cache for efficiency. However, it is
366 rarely useful these days, as framebuffer drivers usually perform writes only,
367 for which ioremap_wc() is more efficient (as it doesn't needlessly trash the
368 cache). Most drivers should not use this.
373 Like ioremap(), but explicitly requests non-posted write semantics. On some
374 architectures and buses, ioremap() mappings have posted write semantics, which
375 means that writes can appear to "complete" from the point of view of the
376 CPU before the written data actually arrives at the target device. Writes are
377 still ordered with respect to other writes and reads from the same device, but
378 due to the posted write semantics, this is not the case with respect to other
379 devices. ioremap_np() explicitly requests non-posted semantics, which means
380 that the write instruction will not appear to complete until the device has
381 received (and to some platform-specific extent acknowledged) the written data.
383 This mapping mode primarily exists to cater for platforms with bus fabrics that
384 require this particular mapping mode to work correctly. These platforms set the
385 ``IORESOURCE_MEM_NONPOSTED`` flag for a resource that requires ioremap_np()
386 semantics and portable drivers should use an abstraction that automatically
387 selects it where appropriate (see the `Higher-level ioremap abstractions`_
390 The bare ioremap_np() is only available on some architectures; on others, it
391 always returns NULL. Drivers should not normally use it, unless they are
392 platform-specific or they derive benefit from non-posted writes where
393 supported, and can fall back to ioremap() otherwise. The normal approach to
394 ensure posted write completion is to do a dummy read after a write as
395 explained in `Accessing the device`_, which works with ioremap() on all
398 ioremap_np() should never be used for PCI drivers. PCI memory space writes are
399 always posted, even on architectures that otherwise implement ioremap_np().
400 Using ioremap_np() for PCI BARs will at best result in posted write semantics,
401 and at worst result in complete breakage.
403 Note that non-posted write semantics are orthogonal to CPU-side ordering
404 guarantees. A CPU may still choose to issue other reads or writes before a
405 non-posted write instruction retires. See the previous section on MMIO access
406 functions for details on the CPU side of things.
411 ioremap_uc() behaves like ioremap() except that on the x86 architecture without
412 'PAT' mode, it marks memory as uncached even when the MTRR has designated
413 it as cacheable, see Documentation/x86/pat.rst.
415 Portable drivers should avoid the use of ioremap_uc().
420 ioremap_cache() effectively maps I/O memory as normal RAM. CPU write-back
421 caches can be used, and the CPU is free to treat the device as if it were a
422 block of RAM. This should never be used for device memory which has side
423 effects of any kind, or which does not return the data previously written on
426 It should also not be used for actual RAM, as the returned pointer is an
427 ``__iomem`` token. memremap() can be used for mapping normal RAM that is outside
428 of the linear kernel memory area to a regular pointer.
430 Portable drivers should avoid the use of ioremap_cache().
435 Here is how the above modes map to memory attribute settings on the ARM64
438 +------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
439 | API | Memory region type and cacheability |
440 +------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
441 | ioremap_np() | Device-nGnRnE |
442 +------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
443 | ioremap() | Device-nGnRE |
444 +------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
445 | ioremap_uc() | (not implemented) |
446 +------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
447 | ioremap_wc() | Normal-Non Cacheable |
448 +------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
449 | ioremap_wt() | (not implemented; fallback to ioremap) |
450 +------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
451 | ioremap_cache() | Normal-Write-Back Cacheable |
452 +------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
454 Higher-level ioremap abstractions
455 =================================
457 Instead of using the above raw ioremap() modes, drivers are encouraged to use
458 higher-level APIs. These APIs may implement platform-specific logic to
459 automatically choose an appropriate ioremap mode on any given bus, allowing for
460 a platform-agnostic driver to work on those platforms without any special
461 cases. At the time of this writing, the following ioremap() wrappers have such
464 devm_ioremap_resource()
466 Can automatically select ioremap_np() over ioremap() according to platform
467 requirements, if the ``IORESOURCE_MEM_NONPOSTED`` flag is set on the struct
468 resource. Uses devres to automatically unmap the resource when the driver
469 probe() function fails or a device in unbound from its driver.
471 Documented in Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/devres.rst.
473 of_address_to_resource()
475 Automatically sets the ``IORESOURCE_MEM_NONPOSTED`` flag for platforms that
476 require non-posted writes for certain buses (see the nonposted-mmio and
477 posted-mmio device tree properties).
481 Maps the resource described in a ``reg`` property in the device tree, doing
482 all required translations. Automatically selects ioremap_np() according to
483 platform requirements, as above.
485 pci_ioremap_bar(), pci_ioremap_wc_bar()
487 Maps the resource described in a PCI base address without having to extract
488 the physical address first.
490 pci_iomap(), pci_iomap_wc()
492 Like pci_ioremap_bar()/pci_ioremap_bar(), but also works on I/O space when
493 used together with ioread32()/iowrite32() and similar accessors
497 Like pci_iomap(), but uses devres to automatically unmap the resource when
498 the driver probe() function fails or a device in unbound from its driver
500 Documented in Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/devres.rst.
502 Not using these wrappers may make drivers unusable on certain platforms with
503 stricter rules for mapping I/O memory.
505 Generalizing Access to System and I/O Memory
506 ============================================
508 .. kernel-doc:: include/linux/iosys-map.h
511 .. kernel-doc:: include/linux/iosys-map.h
514 Public Functions Provided
515 =========================
517 .. kernel-doc:: arch/x86/include/asm/io.h
520 .. kernel-doc:: lib/pci_iomap.c