.\" .\" Copyright (c) 2010 The FreeBSD Foundation .\" All rights reserved. .\" .\" This software was developed by Semihalf under sponsorship from .\" the FreeBSD Foundation. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd July 12, 2010 .Dt FDT 4 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm fdt .Nd Flattened Device Tree support .Sh SYNOPSIS .Cd "options FDT" .Cd "makeoptions FDT_DTS_FILE=.dts" .Cd "options FDT_DTB_STATIC" .Sh DESCRIPTION .Em Flattened Device Tree is a mechanism for describing computer hardware resources, which cannot be probed or self enumerated, in a uniform and portable way. The primary consumers of this technology are .Em embedded systems, where a lot of designs are based on similar chips, but have different assignment of pins, memory layout, addresses bindings, interrupts routing and other resources. .Pp Configuration data, which cannot be self discovered in run-time, has to be supplied from external source. The concept of a flattened device tree is a platform and architecture independent approach for resolving such problems. The idea is inherited from Open Firmware IEEE 1275 device-tree notion, and has been successfully adopted by the embedded industry. The scheme works in the following way: .Bl -bullet .It Hardware platform resources are .Em manually described in a human readable text source format, where all non self-enumerating information is gathered. .It This source description is converted .Em (compiled) into a binary object i.e. a flattened device tree .Em blob which is passed to the kernel at boot time. .It The kernel (driver) learns about hardware resources details and dependencies from this [externally supplied] blob, which eliminates the need for embedding any information about the underlying platform hardware resources in the kernel. .It The flattened device tree mechanism in principle does not depend on any particular first-stage bootloader or firmware features. The only overall requirement for the environment is to provide a complete device tree description to the kernel. .El .Pp The .Nm layer allows any platform code in the kernel to retrieve information about hardware resources from a unified origin, which brings advantages to the embedded applications (eliminates hard-coded configuration approach, enforces code to be data driven and extensible) leading to easier porting and maintenance. .Sh DEFINITIONS .Bl -tag -width Ar .It Va Device tree source (DTS) The device tree source is a text file which describes hardware resources of a computer system in a human-readable form, with certain hierarchical structure (a tree). The default location for DTS files in the .Fx source repository is .Pa sys/boot/fdt/dts directory. .It Va Device tree blob (DTB) The textual device tree description (DTS file) is first converted (compiled) into a binary object (the device tree blob) i.e. the DTB, which is handed over to the final consumer (typically kernel) for parsing and processing of its contents. .It Va Device tree compiler (DTC) A utility program executed on the host, which transforms (compiles) a textual description of a device tree (DTS) into a binary object (DTB). .It Va Device tree bindings While the device tree textual description and the binary object are media to convey the hardware configuration information, an actual meaning and interpretation of the contents are defined by the device tree .Pa bindings . They are certain conventions describing definitions (encoding) of particular nodes in a device tree and their properties, allowed values, ranges and so on. Such reference conventions were provided by the legacy Open Firmware bindings, further supplemented by the ePAPR specification. .El .Sh "BUILDING THE WORLD" In order for the system to support .Nm it is required that .Fx world be built with the .Pa WITH_FDT build knob supplied either via .Xr src.conf 5 or command line defined with -D. .Pp This creates the user space .Pa dtc compiler and enables .Nm support in .Xr loader 8 . .Sh "BUILDING KERNEL" There is a couple of options for managing .Nm support at the .Fx kernel level. .Bl -tag -width Ar .It Va options FDT The primary option for enabling .Nm support in the kernel. It covers all low-level and infrastructure parts of .Nm kernel support, which primarily are the .Xr fdtbus 4 and .Xr simplebus 4 drivers, as well as helper routines and libraries. .It Va makeoptions FDT_DTS_FILE=.dts Specifies a preferred (default) device tree source (DTS) file for a given kernel. The indicated DTS file will be converted (compiled) into a binary form along with building the kernel itself. The DTS file name is relative to the default location of DTS sources i.e. .Pa sys/boot/fdt/dts . This makeoption is not mandatory unless FDT_DTB_STATIC is also defined (see below). .It Va options FDT_DTB_STATIC Typically, the device tree blob (DTB) is a stand-alone file, physically separate from the kernel, but this option lets statically embed a DTB file into a kernel image. Note that when this is specified the FDT_DTS_FILE makeoption becomes mandatory (as there needs to be a DTS file specified in order to embed it into the kernel image). .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr fdtbus 4 , .Xr openfirm 4 , .Xr simplebus 4 .Sh STANDARDS IEEE Std 1275: IEEE Standard for Boot (Initialization Configuration) Firmware: Core Requirements and Practices .Pq Vt Open Firmware . .Pp Power.org Standard for Embedded Power Architecture Platform Requirements .Pq Vt ePAPR . .Sh HISTORY The .Nm support first appeared in .Fx 9.0 . .Sh AUTHORS The .Nm support was developed by Semihalf under sponsorship from the FreeBSD Foundation. This manual page was written by .An Rafal Jaworowski .