IA-64 : The (EFI) boot loader

Notes here apply to certain extend to the SKI boot loader as well of course. However, the focus is on the EFI boot loader.

Currently the kernel is loaded at a fixed (physical) address. This is required because the kernel image uses direct-mapped (region 7) virtual addressing. This needs to change for 2 reasons:

  1. The EFI environment is dynamic and it is not guaranteed that the memory is free to use. Heck, it may not even be present,
  2. In a NUMA environment you typically do not want direct-mapped virtual addressing for code because that prevents replication. Replication is important for keeping the code close to the processor that executes it.

The above can be addressed as follows:

A scheme that implements the above is outlined below:

  1. Allocate a 4KB page somewhere in physical memory that's close to the BSP. This page is hardwired at 0xbffffffffffff000 and serves as a page table for the special purpose mapping used by the loader for the kernel, the modules, relocation data and other boot data. The page size used is 1MB and the virtual base address covered by this page table is 0xbffc000000000000. Hence, the 4KB page table allows for 512MB of loaded code and data.
  2. The loader allocates 1M aligned pages of 1MB somewhere in physical memory that's close to the BSP whenever it needs memory for loading modules (including kernel). It allocates these 1MB pages from the high end of the available physical memory and updates the special purpose page table. The loader hardwires the first 1MB page of the kernel image under the assumption that it contains the IVT and hence contains the code that knows how to map subsequent pages. The kernel is linked at 0xbffc000000000000.
  3. When a NUMA capable kernel has booted and wants to replicate itself, it performs steps 1 and 2 for each node in the machine and then fires up the monarch processor in that node. It needs to tell the monarch where the page table is in physical memory.
  4. When the BSP or monarch in a node fires up the APs, it only needs to tell the AP where it's copy of the page table is. The AP can hardwire the page table and then hardwire the first 1MB page given the page table. From that moment on the AP can switch to virtual addressing.

Addendum:

Basicly, for a processor to switch to virtual addressing, the physical address of the 4KB page table is needed. The BSP gets it from the loader. All monarchs get it from the BSP and all APs (other than monarchs) get it from the monarch (or BSP) in each respective nodes.

Another thing the loader could/should do is switch EFI to virtual addressing. Currently it's the kernel that does that. This works, but requires that the kernel supports calling EFI in physical addressing mode. This is only needed to switch EFI to virtual addressing. If we do it in the loader, we won't have to worry about it in the kernel and it also allows us to simplify the memory map that we pass on to the kernel. We now need to give the complete memory map to the kernel because the kernel needs to pass it along to EFI when it is switched to virtual addressing, but most of the entries or details are not of interest to the kernel. In fact, the EFI memory map is too detailed and contains seperate entries for memory that the kernel can treat as a single entry. Also, locality information can be collected in the loader and passed on to the kernel in the memory map if we have the freedom to create our own. Anyway, it might be beneficial to create some distance between the EFI memory map and the kernel.

Relocations are currently handled by the kernel and we need to relocate the kernel before we can ever think to setup the system console. This is a bit odd, because we can relocate the kernel in the loader with all the debugging ability EFI gives us. So, why not have the loader relocate the kernel and the preloaded modules. The kernel than only needs to relocate modules that are loaded at runtime. If we allow the kernel to use "services" provided by the loader, such as relocation of code, we won't have to duplicate the code -- interesting, the loader providing services to the kernel where functionality overlaps. This, BTW, would probably work very nicely if we ever need to have an EFI bytecode interpreter to support certain drivers...

The bootinfo structure is running out of spare fields. Maybe we should switch to a discontinuous array of (tag,val) pairs. This is easily extended without having to worry about backward compatibility. This is especially important if we're going to do more of the initialization in the loader. The more we do in the loader, the more data we need to pass on to the kernel. Something like the following is probably a good definition:

The following (tag,val) pairs are some of the pairs we need. See the current bootinfo structure for others:

The following are some of the tags we may like to add as a way to simplify the pre-console initialization:

ia64/BootLoader (last edited 2008-06-17T21:38:12+0000 by anonymous)