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

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.\" nvme driver man page.
.\"
.\" Author: Jim Harris <jimharris@FreeBSD.org>
.\"
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd October 10, 2012
.Dt NVME 4
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm nvme
.Nd NVM Express core driver
.Sh SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into your kernel,
place the following line in your kernel configuration file:
.Bd -ragged -offset indent
.Cd "device nvme"
.Ed
.Pp
Or, to load the driver as a module at boot, place the following line in
.Xr loader.conf 5 :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
nvme_load="YES"
.Ed
.Pp
Most users will also want to enable
.Xr nvd 4
to surface NVM Express namespaces as disk devices.
Note that in NVM Express terms, a namespace is roughly equivalent to a
SCSI LUN.
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
driver provides support for NVM Express (NVMe) controllers, such as:
.Bl -bullet
.It
Hardware initialization
.It
Per-CPU IO queue pairs
.It
API for registering NVMe namespace consumers such as
.Xr nvd 4
.It
API for submitting NVM commands to namespaces
.It
Ioctls for controller and namespace configuration and management
.Nm
creates controller devices in the format /dev/nvmeX and namespace devices in
the format /dev/nvmeXnsY.
Note that the NVM Express specification starts numbering namespaces at 1,
not 0, and this driver follows that convention.
.El
.Sh CONFIGURATION
By default,
.Nm
will create an I/O queue pair for each CPU, provided enough MSI-X vectors
can be allocated.
To force a single I/O queue pair shared by all CPUs, set the following
tunable value in
.Xr loader.conf 5 :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
hw.nvme.per_cpu_io_queues=0
.Ed
.Pp
To force legacy interrupts for all
.Nm
driver instances, set the following tunable value in
.Xr loader.conf 5 :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
hw.nvme.force_intx=1
.Ed
.Pp
Note that use of INTx implies disabling of per-CPU I/O queue pairs.
.Sh SYSCTL VARIABLES
The following controller-level sysctls are currently implemented:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Va dev.nvme.0.int_coal_time
(R/W) Interrupt coalescing timer period in microseconds.  Set to 0 to disable.
.It Va dev.nvme.0.int_coal_threshold
(R/W) Interrupt coalescing threshold in number of command completions.
Set to 0 to disable.
.El
.Pp
The following queue pair-level sysctls are currently implemented.
Admin queue sysctls take the format of dev.nvme.0.adminq and I/O queue sysctls
take the format of dev.nvme.0.ioq0.
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Va dev.nvme.0.ioq0.num_entries
(R) Number of entries in this queue pair's command and completion queue.
.It Va dev.nvme.0.ioq0.num_tr
(R) Number of nvme_tracker structures currently allocated for this queue pair.
.It Va dev.nvme.0.ioq0.num_prp_list
(R) Number of nvme_prp_list structures currently allocated for this queue pair.
.It Va dev.nvme.0.ioq0.sq_head
(R) Current location of the submission queue head pointer as observed by
the driver.
The head pointer is incremented by the controller as it takes commands off
of the submission queue.
.It Va dev.nvme.0.ioq0.sq_tail
(R) Current location of the submission queue tail pointer as observed by
the driver.
The driver increments the tail pointer after writing a command
into the submission queue to signal that a new command is ready to be
processed.
.It Va dev.nvme.0.ioq0.cq_head
(R) Current location of the completion queue head pointer as observed by
the driver.
The driver increments the head pointer after finishing
with a completion entry that was posted by the controller.
.It Va dev.nvme.0.ioq0.num_cmds
(R) Number of commands that have been submitted on this queue pair.
.It Va dev.nvme.0.ioq0.dump_debug
(W) Writing 1 to this sysctl will dump the full contents of the submission
and completion queues to the console.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr nvd 4 ,
.Xr pci 4 ,
.Xr nvmecontrol 8 ,
.Xr disk 9 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
The
.Nm
driver was developed by Intel and originally written by
.An Jim Harris Aq jimharris@FreeBSD.org , 
with contributions from Joe Golio at EMC.
.Pp
This man page was written by
.An Jim Harris Aq jimharris@FreeBSD.org .
.Sh BUGS
The
.Nm
driver is considered experimental.
Development and testing have been primarily focused on amd64.
The following areas of development and testing are in progress:
.Bl -bullet
.It
testing on i386
.It
asynchronous error reporting
.It
command timeout error handling
.It
controller-level resets
.El