Changeset 3179c69 for postlfs/config

Timestamp:

06/23/2020 06:39:31 PM (4 years ago)

Author:

Ken Moffat <ken@…>

Branches:

10.0, 10.1, 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 12.0, 12.1, kea, ken/TL2024, ken/inkscape-core-mods, ken/tuningfonts, lazarus, lxqt, plabs/newcss, plabs/python-mods, python3.11, qt5new, rahul/power-profiles-daemon, renodr/vulkan-addition, trunk, upgradedb, xry111/intltool, xry111/llvm18, xry111/soup3, xry111/test-20220226, xry111/xf86-video-removal

Children:

6df48a73

Parents:

dc96204

Message:

Firmware: update some details:

1. Intel (CPU) microcode - update the details for Skylake in the light

of the later release.

2. Video firmware - I had overlooked that Nvidia provided signed

firmware to linux-firmware in January and February for Turing GPUs
and that it is only needed for hardware acceleration so not
essential for working KMS. For completeness, also mention the
problematic Intel iGPU firmware for Skylake and later.

git-svn-id: svn://svn.linuxfromscratch.org/BLFS/trunk/BOOK@23317 af4574ff-66df-0310-9fd7-8a98e5e911e0

File:

• postlfs/config/firmware.xml (modified) (3 diffs)

postlfs/config/firmware.xml

@@ -69 +69 @@
     <listitem>
       <para>
-        Firmware for video controllers. On x86 machines this seems to mostly
-        apply to ATI devices (Radeon and AMDGPU chips) and Nvidia Maxwell
-        and Pascal cards which all require firmware to be able to use KMS
+        Firmware for video controllers. On x86 machines this is required for
+        ATI devices (Radeon and AMDGPU chips) and may be useful for Intel (Skylake
+        and later) and Nvidia (Kepler and later) GPUs.
+      </para>
+
+      <para>
+        ATI Radeon and AMGPU devices all require firmware to be able to use KMS
         (kernel modesetting - the preferred option) as well as for Xorg. For
-        earlier radeon chips (before the R600), the firmware is still in the
-        kernel.
+        old radeon chips (before the R600), the firmware is still in the
+        kernel source.
+      </para>
+
+      <para>
+        Intel integrated GPUs from Skylake onwards can use firmware for GuC
+        (the Graphics microcontroller), and also for the HuC (HEVC/H265
+        microcontroller which offloads to the GPU) and the DMC (Display
+        Microcontroller) to provide additional low-power states. The GuC and
+        HuC have had a chequered history in the kernel and updated firmware
+        may be disabled by default, depending on your kernel version. Further
+        details may be found at <ulink
+        url="https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/firmware/">01.org</ulink>
+        and <ulink
+        url="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/intel_graphics/">Arch
+        linux</ulink>.
+      </para>
+
+      <para>
+        Nvidia GPUs from Kepler onwards require signed firmware, otherwise the
+        nouveau driver is unable to provide hardware acceleration. Nvidia has
+        now released firmware up to Turing (most, maybe all, GTX16xx and RTX20xx
+        GPUs) to linux-firmware, and kernels from linux-5.6 should support it,
+        although Mesa support may require a development version until Mesa-20.2
+        is released. Note that faster clocks than the default are not enabled
+        by the released firmware.
       </para>
     </listitem>
@@ -178 +206 @@
         The first step is to get the most recent version of the Intel
         microcode.  This must be done by navigating to <ulink url=
-         'https://github.com/intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-Files/releases/'/>
+        'https://github.com/intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-Files/releases/'/>
         and downloading the latest file there.  As of this writing the most
-        recent version of the microcode is microcode-20200609.  Extract this
+        secure version of the microcode, for those machines which can boot it,
+        is microcode-20200609. If you have a Skylake machine, please read the
+        Caution in the 'Early loading of microcode' section below.  Extract this
         file in the normal way, the microcode is in the <filename>intel-ucode
         </filename> directory, containing various blobs with names in the form
@@ -383 +413 @@
       <caution>
         <para>
-          On some Skylake machines with hex Model Number '4e' (78 decimal) the upgrade to
-          microcode version '0xdc' is reported to cause the machine to hang in early boot,
-          and the fix is to revert to version 0xd6 which was shipped in the 20191115
-          microcode release.
+          On some Skylake machines with hex Model Number '4e' (78 decimal) the
+          upgrade to microcode version '0xdc' is reported to cause the machine to
+          hang in early boot, and the fix is to revert to version 0xd6 which was
+          first shipped in the 20191115 microcode release.
         </para>
 
         <para>
-          Doing that, while making the machine usable, will mean that the SRBDS
-          mitigations are not present.
+          At least one model '5e' Skylake does boot successfully with version
+          0xdc, but Intel has now shipped a 20200616 release which is intended for
+          distros which need an initrd that will boot on everyone's machine: it
+          reverts both Skylake variants ('4e' and '5e') to the old 0xd6.
         </para>
 
         <para>
-          The Skylake machines with hex Model Number '5e' (94 decimal) use similar
-          firmware versions, but boot correctly with the mitigation applied.
+          For a Skylake which does not boot with 0xdc, reverting to 0xd6 will make
+          the machine usable, but without the SRBDS mitigations.
         </para>
       </caution>