Re: [PATCH] i915: Update VGA arbiter support for newer devices

From: Alex Williamson
Date: Thu Aug 15 2013 - 18:54:28 EST


On Fri, 2013-08-16 at 08:49 +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 8:43 AM, Alex Williamson
> <alex.williamson@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > This is intended to add VGA arbiter support for Intel HD graphics on
> > Core processors. The old GMCH registers no longer exist, so even
> > though it appears that i915 participates in VGA arbitration, it doesn't
> > work. On Intel HD graphics we already attempt to disable VGA regions
> > of the device. This makes registering as a VGA client unnecessary since
> > we don't intend to operate differently depending on how many VGA devices
> > are present. We can disable VGA memory regions by clearing a memory
> > enable bit in the VGA MSR. That only leaves VGA IO, which we update
> > the VGA arbiter to know that we don't participate in VGA memory
> > arbitration. We also add a hook on unload to re-enable memory and
> > reinstate VGA memory arbitration.
>
> I would think there is still a VGA disable bit on the Intel device
> somewhere, we'd just need
> Intel to look in the docs and find it. A bit that can nuke both i/o
> and cmd regs.

The only bit available is in the GGC and is a keyed/locked register that
not only disables VGA memory and I/O, but also modifies the class code
of the device. Early Core processors didn't lock this, but it's
untouchable in newer ones AFAICT. Thanks,

Alex

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