path: root/share/man/man4/fdt.4

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.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=<board name>.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=<board name>.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 .