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NAME
ti — Alteon Networks Tigon I and Tigon II Gigabit Ethernet driver
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel
configuration file:
device ti
options TI_SF_BUF_JUMBO
options TI_JUMBO_HDRSPLIT
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in
loader.conf(5):
if_ti_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The ti driver provides support for PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Alteon
Networks Tigon Gigabit Ethernet controller chip. The Tigon contains an embedded R4000 CPU,
gigabit MAC, dual DMA channels and a PCI interface unit. The Tigon II contains two R4000
CPUs and other refinements. Either chip can be used in either a 32-bit or 64-bit PCI slot.
Communication with the chip is achieved via PCI shared memory and bus master DMA. The Tigon
I and II support hardware multicast address filtering, VLAN tag extraction and insertion,
and jumbo Ethernet frames sizes up to 9000 bytes. Note that the Tigon I chipset is no
longer in active production: all new adapters should come equipped with Tigon II chipsets.
While the Tigon chipset supports 10, 100 and 1000Mbps speeds, support for 10 and 100Mbps
speeds is only available on boards with the proper transceivers. Most adapters are only
designed to work at 1000Mbps, however the driver should support those NICs that work at
lower speeds as well.
Support for jumbo frames is provided via the interface MTU setting. Selecting an MTU larger
than 1500 bytes with the ifconfig(8) utility configures the adapter to receive and transmit
jumbo frames. Using jumbo frames can greatly improve performance for certain tasks, such as
file transfers and data streaming.
Header splitting support for Tigon 2 boards (this option has no effect for the Tigon 1) can
be turned on with the TI_JUMBO_HDRSPLIT option. See zero_copy(9) for more discussion on
zero copy receive and header splitting.
The ti driver uses UMA backed jumbo receive buffers, but can be configured to use
sendfile(2) buffer allocator. To turn on sendfile(2) buffer allocator, use the
TI_SF_BUF_JUMBO option.
Support for vlans is also available using the vlan(4) mechanism. See the vlan(4) man page
for more details.
The ti driver supports the following media types:
autoselect Enable autoselection of the media type and options. The user can
manually override the autoselected mode by adding media options to the
/etc/rc.conf file.
10baseT/UTP Set 10Mbps operation. The mediaopt option can also be used to select
either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.
100baseTX Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation. The mediaopt option can also
be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.
1000baseSX Set 1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet) operation. Only full-duplex mode is
supported at this speed.
The ti driver supports the following media options:
full-duplex Force full-duplex operation.
half-duplex Force half duplex operation.
For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).
HARDWARE
The ti driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Alteon Tigon I and II chips.
The ti driver has been tested with the following adapters:
• 3Com 3c985-SX Gigabit Ethernet adapter (Tigon 1)
• 3Com 3c985B-SX Gigabit Ethernet adapter (Tigon 2)
• Alteon AceNIC V Gigabit Ethernet adapter (1000baseSX)
• Alteon AceNIC V Gigabit Ethernet adapter (1000baseT)
• Digital EtherWORKS 1000SX PCI Gigabit adapter
• Netgear GA620 Gigabit Ethernet adapter (1000baseSX)
• Netgear GA620T Gigabit Ethernet adapter (1000baseT)
The following adapters should also be supported but have not yet been tested:
• Asante GigaNIX1000T Gigabit Ethernet adapter
• Asante PCI 1000BASE-SX Gigabit Ethernet adapter
• Farallon PN9000SX Gigabit Ethernet adapter
• NEC Gigabit Ethernet
• Silicon Graphics PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapter
LOADER TUNABLES
Tunables can be set at the loader(8) prompt before booting the kernel or stored in
loader.conf(5).
hw.ti.%d.dac
If this tunable is set to 0 it will disable DAC (Dual Address Cycle). The default
value is 1 which means driver will use full 64bit DMA addressing.
SYSCTL VARIABLES
The following variables are available as both sysctl(8) variables and loader(8) tunables.
The interface has to be brought down and up again before a change takes effect when any of
the following tunables are changed. The one microsecond clock tick referenced below is a
nominal time and the actual hardware may not provide granularity to this level. For
example, on Tigon 2 (revision 6) cards with release 12.0 the clock granularity is 5
microseconds.
dev.ti.%d.rx_coal_ticks
This value, receive coalesced ticks, controls the number of clock ticks (of 1
microseconds each) that must elapse before the NIC DMAs the receive return producer
pointer to the Host and generates an interrupt. This parameter works in conjunction
with the rx_max_coal_bds, receive max coalesced BDs, tunable parameter. The NIC
will return the receive return producer pointer to the Host when either of the
thresholds is exceeded. A value of 0 means that this parameter is ignored and
receive BDs will only be returned when the receive max coalesced BDs value is
reached. The default value is 170.
dev.ti.%d.rx_max_coal_bds
This value, receive max coalesced BDs, controls the number of receive buffer
descriptors that will be coalesced before the NIC updates the receive return ring
producer index. If this value is set to 0 it will disable receive buffer descriptor
coalescing. The default value is 64.
dev.ti.%d.ti_tx_coal_ticks
This value, send coalesced ticks, controls the number of clock ticks (of 1
microseconds each) that must elapse before the NIC DMAs the send consumer pointer to
the Host and generates an interrupt. This parameter works in conjunction with the
tx_max_coal_bds, send max coalesced BDs, tunable parameter. The NIC will return the
send consumer pointer to the Host when either of the thresholds is exceeded. A
value of 0 means that this parameter is ignored and send BDs will only be returned
when the send max coalesced BDs value is reached. The default value is 2000.
dev.ti.%d.tx_max_coal_bds
This value, send max coalesced BDs, controls the number of send buffer descriptors
that will be coalesced before the NIC updates the send consumer index. If this
value is set to 0 it will disable send buffer descriptor coalescing. The default
value is 32.
dev.ti.%d.tx_buf_ratio
This value controls the ratio of the remaining memory in the NIC that should be
devoted to transmit buffer vs. receive buffer. The lower 7 bits are used to
indicate the ratio in 1/64th increments. For example, setting this value to 16 will
set the transmit buffer to 1/4 of the remaining buffer space. In no cases will the
transmit or receive buffer be reduced below 68 KB. For a 1 MB NIC the approximate
total space for data buffers is 800 KB. For a 512 KB NIC that number is 300 KB.
The default value is 21.
dev.ti.%d.stat_ticks
The value, stat ticks, controls the number of clock ticks (of 1 microseconds each)
that must elapse before the NIC DMAs the statistics block to the Host and generates
a STATS_UPDATED event. If set to zero then statistics are never DMAed to the Host.
It is recommended that this value be set to a high enough frequency to not mislead
someone reading statistics refreshes. Several times a second is enough. The
default value is 2000000 (2 seconds).
IOCTLS
In addition to the standard socket(2) ioctl(2) calls implemented by most network drivers,
the ti driver also includes a character device interface that can be used for additional
diagnostics, configuration and debugging. With this character device interface, and a
specially patched version of gdb(1), the user can debug firmware running on the Tigon board.
These ioctls and their arguments are defined in the <sys/tiio.h> header file.
TIIOCGETSTATS Return card statistics DMAed from the card into kernel memory
approximately every 2 seconds. (That time interval can be changed via the
TIIOCSETPARAMS ioctl.) The argument is struct ti_stats.
TIIOCGETPARAMS Get various performance-related firmware parameters that largely affect
how interrupts are coalesced. The argument is struct ti_params.
TIIOCSETPARAMS Set various performance-related firmware parameters that largely affect
how interrupts are coalesced. The argument is struct ti_params.
TIIOCSETTRACE Tell the NIC to trace the requested types of information. The argument is
ti_trace_type.
TIIOCGETTRACE Dump the trace buffer from the card. The argument is struct ti_trace_buf.
ALT_ATTACH This ioctl is used for compatibility with Alteon's Solaris driver. They
apparently only have one character interface for debugging, so they have
to tell it which Tigon instance they want to debug. This ioctl is a noop
for FreeBSD.
ALT_READ_TG_MEM Read the requested memory region from the Tigon board. The argument is
struct tg_mem.
ALT_WRITE_TG_MEM Write to the requested memory region on the Tigon board. The argument is
struct tg_mem.
ALT_READ_TG_REG Read the requested register from the Tigon board. The argument is struct
tg_reg.
ALT_WRITE_TG_REG Write to the requested register on the Tigon board. The argument is
struct tg_reg.
FILES
/dev/ti[0-255] Tigon driver character interface.
DIAGNOSTICS
ti%d: couldn't map memory A fatal initialization error has occurred.
ti%d: couldn't map interrupt A fatal initialization error has occurred.
ti%d: no memory for softc struct! The driver failed to allocate memory for per-device
instance information during initialization.
ti%d: failed to enable memory mapping! The driver failed to initialize PCI shared memory
mapping. This might happen if the card is not in a bus-master slot.
ti%d: no memory for jumbo buffers! The driver failed to allocate memory for jumbo frames
during initialization.
ti%d: bios thinks we're in a 64 bit slot, but we aren't The BIOS has programmed the NIC as
though it had been installed in a 64-bit PCI slot, but in fact the NIC is in a 32-bit slot.
This happens as a result of a bug in some BIOSes. This can be worked around on the Tigon
II, but on the Tigon I initialization will fail.
ti%d: board self-diagnostics failed! The ROMFAIL bit in the CPU state register was set
after system startup, indicating that the on-board NIC diagnostics failed.
ti%d: unknown hwrev The driver detected a board with an unsupported hardware revision. The
ti driver supports revision 4 (Tigon 1) and revision 6 (Tigon 2) chips and has firmware only
for those devices.
ti%d: watchdog timeout The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a
problem with the network connection (cable).
SEE ALSO
sendfile(2), altq(4), arp(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), vlan(4), ifconfig(8), zero_copy(9)
HISTORY
The ti device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.
AUTHORS
The ti driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@bsdi.com>. The header splitting firmware
modifications, character ioctl(2) interface and debugging support were written by Kenneth
Merry <ken@FreeBSD.org>. Initial zero copy support was written by Andrew Gallatin
<gallatin@FreeBSD.org>.