xref: /netbsd-src/share/man/man4/nvme.4 (revision c38e7cc395b1472a774ff828e46123de44c628e9)
1.\"	$NetBSD: nvme.4,v 1.10 2017/04/27 17:32:26 jdolecek Exp $
2.\"	$OpenBSD: nvme.4,v 1.2 2016/04/14 11:53:37 jmc Exp $
3.\"
4.\" Copyright (c) 2016 David Gwynne <dlg@openbsd.org>
5.\"
6.\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
7.\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
8.\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
9.\"
10.\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
11.\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
12.\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
13.\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
14.\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
15.\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
16.\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
17.\"
18.Dd April 27, 2017
19.Dt NVME 4
20.Os
21.Sh NAME
22.Nm nvme
23.Nd Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface
24.Sh SYNOPSIS
25.Cd "nvme* at pci? dev ? function ?"
26.Sh DESCRIPTION
27The
28.Nm
29driver provides support for NVMe, or NVM Express,
30storage controllers conforming to the
31Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface specification.
32Controllers complying to specification version 1.1 and 1.2 are known to work.
33Other versions should work too for normal operation with the exception of some
34pass-through commands.
35.Pp
36The driver supports the following features:
37.Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
38.It
39controller and namespace configuration and management using
40.Xr nvmectl 8
41.It
42highly parallel I/O using per-CPU I/O queues
43.It
44PCI MSI/MSI-X attachment, and INTx for legacy systems
45.El
46.Pp
47On systems supporting MSI/MSI-X, the
48.Nm
49driver uses per-CPU IO queue pairs for lockless and highly parallelized I/O.
50Interrupt handlers are scheduled on distinct CPUs.
51The driver allocates as many interrupt vectors as available, up to number
52of CPUs + 1.
53MSI supports up to 32 interrupt vectors within the system,
54MSI-X can have up to 2k.
55Each I/O queue pair has a separate command circular buffer.
56The
57.Nm
58specification allows up to 64k commands per queue, the driver currently
59allocates 1024 entries per queue, or controller maximum, whatever is smaller.
60Command submissions are done always on the current CPU, the command completion
61interrupt is handled on the CPU corresponding to the I/O queue ID
62- first I/O queue on CPU0, second I/O queue on CPU1, etc.
63Admin queue command completion is handled by CPU0 by default.
64To keep lock contention to minimum, it is recommended to keep this assignment,
65even though it is possible to reassign the interrupt handlers differently
66using
67.Xr intrctl 8 .
68.Pp
69On systems without MSI, the driver uses a single HW interrupt handler for
70both admin and standard I/O commands.
71Command submissions are done on the current CPU, the command completion
72interrupt is handled on CPU0 by default.
73This leads to some lock contention, especially on command ccbs.
74.Pp
75The driver offloads command completion processing to soft interrupt,
76in order to increase the total system I/O capacity and throughput.
77.Sh FILES
78.Bl -tag -width /dev/nvmeX -compact
79.It Pa /dev/nvme*
80nvme device special files used by
81.Xr nvmectl 8 .
82.El
83.Sh SEE ALSO
84.Xr intro 4 ,
85.Xr ld 4 ,
86.Xr pci 4 ,
87.Xr intrctl 8 ,
88.Xr MAKEDEV 8 ,
89.Xr nvmectl 8
90.Rs
91.%A NVM Express, Inc.
92.%T "NVM Express \- scalable, efficient, and industry standard"
93.%D 2016-06-12
94.%U http://nvmexpress.org/
95.Re
96.Rs
97.%A NVM Express, Inc.
98.%T "NVM Express Revision 1.2.1"
99.%D 2016-06-05
100.%U http://www.nvmexpress.org/wp-content/uploads/NVM_Express_1_2_1_Gold_20160603.pdf
101.Re
102.Sh HISTORY
103The
104.Nm
105driver first appeared in
106.Ox 6.0
107and in
108.Nx 8.0 .
109.Sh AUTHORS
110.An -nosplit
111The
112.Nm
113driver was written by
114.An David Gwynne
115.Aq Mt dlg@openbsd.org
116for
117.Ox
118and ported to
119.Nx
120by
121.An NONAKA Kimihiro
122.Aq Mt nonaka@NetBSD.org .
123.An Jaromir Dolecek
124.Aq Mt jdolecek@NetBSD.org
125contributed to making this driver MPSAFE.
126.Sh NOTES
127At least some
128.Tn Intel
129.Nm
130adapter cards are known to require
131.Tn PCIe
132Generation 3 slot.
133Such cards do not even probe when plugged
134into older generation slot.
135.Pp
136The driver was also tested and confirmed working fine for emulated
137.Nm
138devices under QEMU 2.8.0 and
139.Tn Oracle
140.Tn VirtualBox
1415.1.20.
142