An annotated look at a NetBSD Pinebook's startup

Pinebook is an affordable 64-bit ARM notebook. Today we're going to take a look at the kernel output at startup and talk about what hardware support is available on NetBSD.

MATE 1.20 on NetBSD arm64 (Pinebook), thanks @YouriMouton ! pic.twitter.com/VYHDzQY1gb

— Jared McNeill (@jmcwhatever) May 20, 2018

Loaded initial symtab at 0xffffffc0007342c0, strtab at 0xffffffc0007e3208, # entries 29859
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NetBSD 8.99.17 (GENERIC64) #272: Mon May 21 07:25:46 ADT 2018
	jmcneill@persona.local:/Users/jmcneill/netbsd/cvs-src/sys/arch/evbarm/compile/obj/GENERIC64
total memory = 2007 MB
avail memory = 1942 MB

Pinebook comes with 2GB RAM standard. A small amount of this is reserved by the kernel and framebuffer.

timecounter: Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
armfdt0 (root)
fdt0 at armfdt0: Pine64 Pinebook
fdt1 at fdt0
fdt2 at fdt0

NetBSD uses flattened device-tree (FDT) to enumerate devices on all Allwinner based SoCs. On a running system, you can inspect the device tree using the ofctl(8) utility:

$ ofctl -p /sound  
[Caching 111 nodes and 697 properties]
compatible              73696d70 6c652d61 7564696f 2d636172   "simple-audio-car
            0010:       6400.... ........ ........ ........   d"
name                    736f756e 6400.... ........ ........   "sound"
simple-audio-card,format
                        69327300 ........ ........ ........   i2s.
simple-audio-card,frame-master
                        0000001c ........ ........ ........   ....
simple-audio-card,name  53554e35 30492041 7564696f 20436172   SUN50I Audio Car
            0010:       6400.... ........ ........ ........   d.

cpus0 at fdt0
cpu0 at cpus0: Cortex-A53 r0p4 (Cortex V8-A core)
cpu0: CPU Affinity 0-0-0-0
cpu0: IC enabled, DC enabled, EL0/EL1 stack Alignment check enabled
cpu0: Cache Writeback Granule 16B, Exclusives Reservation Granule 16B
cpu0: Dcache line 64, Icache line 64
cpu0: L1 32KB/64B 2-way read-allocate VIPT Instruction cache
cpu0: L1 32KB/64B 4-way write-back read-allocate write-allocate PIPT Data cache
cpu0: L2 512KB/64B 16-way write-back read-allocate write-allocate PIPT Unified cache
cpu0: revID=0x80, PMCv3, 4k table, 64k table, 16bit ASID
cpu0: auxID=0x11120, FP, CRC32, SHA1, SHA256, AES+PMULL, NEON, rounding, NaN propagation, denormals, 32x64bitRegs, Fused Multiply-Add

Pinebook's Allwinner A64 processor is based on the ARM Cortex-A53. It is designed to run at frequencies up to 1.2GHz.

cpufreqdt0 at cpu0

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) is supported for the CPU. More on this in a bit...

cpu1 at cpus0: disabled (uniprocessor kernel)
cpu2 at cpus0: disabled (uniprocessor kernel)
cpu3 at cpus0: disabled (uniprocessor kernel)

The A64 is a quad core design. NetBSD's aarch64 pmap does not yet support SMP, so three cores are disabled for now.

gic0 at fdt1: GIC
armgic0 at gic0: Generic Interrupt Controller, 224 sources (215 valid)
armgic0: 16 Priorities, 192 SPIs, 7 PPIs, 16 SGIs

The interrupt controller is a standard ARM GIC-400 design.

fclock0 at fdt0: 24000000 Hz fixed clock
fclock1 at fdt0: 32768 Hz fixed clock
fclock2 at fdt0: 16000000 Hz fixed clock

Fixed clock input signals.

gtmr0 at fdt0: Generic Timer
gtmr0: interrupting on GIC irq 27
armgtmr0 at gtmr0: ARMv7 Generic 64-bit Timer (24000 kHz)
timecounter: Timecounter "armgtmr0" frequency 24000000 Hz quality 500

Standard ARMv7/ARMv8 architected timer.

sun50ia64ccu0 at fdt1: A64 CCU
sun50ia64rccu0 at fdt1: A64 PRCM CCU

Clock drivers for managing PLLs, module clock dividers, clock gating, software resets, etc. Information about the clock tree is exported in the hw.clk sysctl namespace (root access required to read these values).

# sysctl hw.clk.sun50ia64ccu0.mmc2
hw.clk.sun50ia64ccu0.mmc2.rate = 200000000
hw.clk.sun50ia64ccu0.mmc2.parent = pll_periph0_2x
hw.clk.sun50ia64ccu0.mmc2.parent_domain = sun50ia64ccu0

sunxinmi0 at fdt1: R_INTC

NMI interrupt controller. This is wired to the POK (power on key) pin on the power management IC. In NetBSD, a long (>1.5s) press of the power button on Pinebook triggers a power down event.

sunxigpio0 at fdt1: PIO
gpio0 at sunxigpio0: 103 pins
sunxigpio0: interrupting on GIC irq 43
sunxigpio1 at fdt1: PIO
gpio1 at sunxigpio1: 13 pins
sunxigpio1: interrupting on GIC irq 77

GPIO and multi-function I/O pin support.

sunxipwm0 at fdt1: PWM

Pulse-width modulation driver. This is used on Pinebook to control the brightness of the display backlight.

sunxiusbphy0 at fdt1: USB PHY

USB 2.0 PHY, responsible for powering up and initialization of USB ports.

sunxirsb0 at fdt1: RSB
sunxirsb0: interrupting on GIC irq 71
iic0 at sunxirsb0: I2C bus

Allwinner "Reduced Serial Bus" is an I2C-like interface used to communicate with power management ICs.

axppmic0 at iic0 addr 0x3a3: AXP803
axpreg0 at axppmic0: dldo1
axpreg1 at axppmic0: dldo2
axpreg2 at axppmic0: dldo3
axpreg3 at axppmic0: dldo4
axpreg4 at axppmic0: eldo1
axpreg5 at axppmic0: eldo2
axpreg6 at axppmic0: eldo3
axpreg7 at axppmic0: fldo1
axpreg8 at axppmic0: fldo2
axpreg9 at axppmic0: dcdc1
axpreg10 at axppmic0: dcdc2
axpreg11 at axppmic0: dcdc3
axpreg12 at axppmic0: dcdc4
axpreg13 at axppmic0: dcdc5
axpreg14 at axppmic0: dcdc6
axpreg15 at axppmic0: aldo1
axpreg16 at axppmic0: aldo2
axpreg17 at axppmic0: aldo3

The X-Powers AXP803 power management IC (PMIC) controls power outputs and battery charging. Power, charging, and battery status is exported to userland with the envsys(4) API:

$ envstat -d axppmic0
                   Current  CritMax  WarnMax  WarnMin  CritMin  Unit
   ACIN present:      TRUE
   VBUS present:     FALSE
battery present:      TRUE
       charging:     FALSE
   charge state:    NORMAL
battery percent:       100                                      none

sun6idma0 at fdt1: DMA controller (8 channels)
sun6idma0: interrupting on GIC irq 82

8-channel programmable DMA controller. Used by the audio driver.

/soc/syscon@1c00000 at fdt1 not configured

A miscellaneous register set of registers. The Allwinner A64 ethernet driver uses these resources to configure the PHY interface. Not used on Pinebook.

ausoc0 at fdt0: SUN50I Audio Card
a64acodec0 at fdt1: A64 Audio Codec (analog part)
sunxii2s0 at fdt1: Audio Codec (digital part)
sun8icodec0 at fdt1: Audio Codec
sun8icodec0: interrupting on GIC irq 60

Analog audio codec. On Allwinner A64 this functionality is spread across multiple modules. The ausoc driver is responsible for talking to these drivers and exposing a single audio device. Initialization is deferred until all drivers are ready, so the audio device is attached below.

psci0 at fdt0: PSCI 0.2

ARM "Power State Coordination Interface". NetBSD uses this to implement reset, power off, and (for multiprocessor kernels) starting secondary CPUs.

gpiokeys0 at fdt0: Lid Switch

Pinebook has a Hall effect sensor wired to a GPIO to signal whether the lid is open or closed. On NetBSD state change events are sent to powerd, as well as broadcast to other drivers in the kernel. For example, the backlight driver will automatically turn off the display when the lid is closed.

pwmbacklight0 at fdt0: PWM Backlight <0 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100>

The backlight brightness on Pinebook is controlled by the PWM controller. These controls are exported via sysctl:

$ sysctl hw.pwmbacklight0
hw.pwmbacklight0.levels = 0 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
hw.pwmbacklight0.level = 80

In addition, the framebuffer driver will pass WSDISPLAYIO_SVIDEO ioctl requests through to the backlight driver, so screen blanking in Xorg will work.

sunximmc0 at fdt1: SD/MMC controller
sunximmc0: interrupting on GIC irq 92
sunximmc1 at fdt1: SD/MMC controller
sunximmc1: interrupting on GIC irq 93
sunximmc2 at fdt1: SD/MMC controller
sunximmc2: interrupting on GIC irq 94

SD/MMC controllers. On Pinebook, they are used for the following functions:

• #0: SD card slot
• #1: SDIO Wi-Fi
• #2: Onboard eMMC

motg0 at fdt1: USB OTG
motg0: interrupting on GIC irq 103
usb0 at motg0: USB revision 2.0

USB OTG controller. NetBSD supports this in host mode only.

ehci0 at fdt1: EHCI
ehci0: interrupting on GIC irq 104
ehci0: EHCI version 1.0
ehci0: 1 companion controller, 1 port
usb1 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
ohci0 at fdt1: OHCI
ohci0: interrupting on GIC irq 105
ohci0: OHCI version 1.0
usb2 at ohci0: USB revision 1.0
ehci1 at fdt1: EHCI
ehci1: interrupting on GIC irq 106
ehci1: EHCI version 1.0
ehci1: 1 companion controller, 1 port
usb3 at ehci1: USB revision 2.0
ohci1 at fdt1: OHCI
ohci1: interrupting on GIC irq 107
ohci1: OHCI version 1.0
usb4 at ohci1: USB revision 1.0

USB 2.0 host controllers.

com0 at fdt1: ns16550a, working fifo
com0: interrupting on GIC irq 32

Serial console.

sunxirtc0 at fdt1: RTC

Real-time clock. Note that the Pinebook does not include a battery backed RTC.

sunxiwdt0 at fdt1: Watchdog
sunxiwdt0: default watchdog period is 16 seconds

The watchdog timer can be enabled with the wdogctl(8) utility:

# wdogctl
Available watchdog timers:
        sunxiwdt0, 16 second period

sunxithermal0 at fdt1: Thermal sensor controller
sunxithermal0: interrupting on GIC irq 63
sunxithermal0: cpu: alarm 85C hyst 58C shut 106C
sunxithermal0: gpu1: alarm 85C hyst 58C shut 106C
sunxithermal0: gpu2: alarm 85C hyst 58C shut 106C

CPU and GPU temperatures are exported to userland with the envsys(4) API:

$ envstat -d sunxithermal0
                     Current  CritMax  WarnMax  WarnMin  CritMin  Unit
  CPU temperature:    54.000                                      degC
GPU temperature 1:    52.000                                      degC
GPU temperature 2:    52.000                                      degC

In addition, the thermal sensor driver coordinates with the DVFS driver to automatically throttle CPU frequency and voltage when temperatures exceed alarm thresholds.

genfb0 at fdt2: Simple Framebuffer (1366x768 32-bpp @ 0xbe000000)
genfb0: switching to framebuffer console
genfb0: framebuffer at 0xbe000000, size 1366x768, depth 32, stride 5464
wsdisplay0 at genfb0 kbdmux 1: console (default, vt100 emulation)
wsmux1: connecting to wsdisplay0
wsdisplay0: screen 1-3 added (default, vt100 emulation)

NetBSD will automatically use a framebuffer configured by U-Boot using the simplefb protocol. Since the simple frame buffer driver uses genfb(4), it is supported by Xorg out of the box.

ausoc0: codec: sun8icodec0, cpu: sunxii2s0, aux: a64acodec0
audio0 at ausoc0: full duplex, playback, capture, mmap, independent
ausoc0: Virtual format configured - Format SLINEAR, precision 16, channels 2, frequency 48000
ausoc0: Latency: 256 milliseconds

Analog playback and capture are supported on Pinebook. In addition, headphone jack sensing is supported to automatically mute the internal speakers when headphones are plugged in. The following mixer controls are available:

$ mixerctl -a
outputs.master=192,192
outputs.mute=off
outputs.source=line
inputs.line=192,192
inputs.headphones=128,128
record.line=0,0
record.mic=96,96
record.mic.preamp=off
record.mic2=96,96
record.mic2.preamp=off
record.agc=96,96
record.source=

spkr0 at audio0: PC Speaker (synthesized)
wsbell at spkr0 not configured

Pseudo PC speaker driver (not currently enabled in GENERIC64 kernel).

timecounter: Timecounter "clockinterrupt" frequency 100 Hz quality 0
Lid Switch: lid opened.
cpufreqdt0: 1152.000 MHz, 1300000 uV
cpufreqdt0: 1104.000 MHz, 1260000 uV
cpufreqdt0: 1008.000 MHz, 1200000 uV
cpufreqdt0: 816.000 MHz, 1080000 uV
cpufreqdt0: 648.000 MHz, 1040000 uV
cpufreqdt0: 408.000 MHz, 1000000 uV

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling is supported. The desired frequency can be set manually with sysctl, or automatically by installing sysutils/estd from pkgsrc.

# sysctl machdep.cpu
machdep.cpu.frequency.target = 1152
machdep.cpu.frequency.current = 1152
machdep.cpu.frequency.available = 1152 1104 1008 816 648 408

sdmmc0 at sunximmc0
sdmmc1 at sunximmc1
sdmmc2 at sunximmc2
uhub0 at usb0: NetBSD (0000) MOTG root hub (0000), class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 1 port with 1 removable, self powered
uhub1 at usb1: NetBSD (0000) EHCI root hub (0000), class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub1: 1 port with 1 removable, self powered
uhub2 at usb2: NetBSD (0000) OHCI root hub (0000), class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub2: 1 port with 1 removable, self powered
uhub3 at usb3: NetBSD (0000) EHCI root hub (0000), class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub3: 1 port with 1 removable, self powered
uhub4 at usb4: NetBSD (0000) OHCI root hub (0000), class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub4: 1 port with 1 removable, self powered
IPsec: Initialized Security Association Processing.
(manufacturer 0x24c, product 0xb703, standard function interface code 0x7) at sdmmc1 function 1 not configured

SDIO Wi-Fi is not yet supported.

ld2 at sdmmc2: <0x88:0x0103:NCard :0x00:0x30601836:0x000>
ld2: 14800 MB, 7517 cyl, 64 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 30310400 sectors
ld2: 8-bit width, HS200, 64 MB cache, 200.000 MHz

Pinebook comes with 16GB of built-in eMMC storage. NetBSD drives this in High Speed HS200 mode, which can support up to 200MB/s at 200MHz.

uhub5 at uhub3 port 1: vendor 05e3 (0x5e3) USB2.0 Hub (0x608), class 9/0, rev 2.00/88.32, addr 2
uhub5: single transaction translator
uhub5: 4 ports with 1 removable, self powered
uhidev0 at uhub5 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0
uhidev0: HAILUCK CO.,LTD (0x258a) USB KEYBOARD (0x0c), rev 1.10/1.00, addr 3, iclass 3/1
ukbd0 at uhidev0: 8 Variable keys, 6 Array codes
wskbd0 at ukbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
uhidev1 at uhub5 port 1 configuration 1 interface 1
uhidev1: HAILUCK CO.,LTD (0x258a) USB KEYBOARD (0x0c), rev 1.10/1.00, addr 3, iclass 3/0
uhidev1: 9 report ids
ums0 at uhidev1 reportid 1: 5 buttons, W and Z dirs
wsmouse0 at ums0 mux 0
uhid0 at uhidev1 reportid 2: input=1, output=0, feature=0
uhid1 at uhidev1 reportid 3: input=3, output=0, feature=0
uhid2 at uhidev1 reportid 5: input=0, output=0, feature=5
uhid3 at uhidev1 reportid 6: input=0, output=0, feature=1039
uhid4 at uhidev1 reportid 9: input=1, output=0, feature=0

The Pinebook's keyboard and touchpad are connected internally to a USB controller.

The sleep (Fn+Esc), home (Fn+F1), volume down (Fn+F3), volume up (Fn+F4), and mute (Fn+F5) keys on the keyboard are mapped to uhid(4) devices. These can be used with usbhidaction(1):

# cat /etc/usbhidaction.conf 
Consumer:Consumer_Control.Consumer:Volume_Up                    1
        mixerctl -n -w outputs.master++
Consumer:Consumer_Control.Consumer:Volume_Down                  1
        mixerctl -n -w outputs.master--
Consumer:Consumer_Control.Consumer:Mute                         1
        mixerctl -n -w outputs.mute++
Consumer:Consumer_Control.Consumer:AC_Home                      1
        /etc/powerd/scripts/hotkey_button AC_Home pressed
Generic_Desktop:System_Control.Generic_Desktop:System_Sleep     1
        /etc/powerd/scripts/sleep_button System_Sleep pressed
# /usr/bin/usbhidaction -c /etc/usbhidaction.conf -f /dev/uhid0 -i -p /var/run/usbhidaction-uhid0.pid 
# /usr/bin/usbhidaction -c /etc/usbhidaction.conf -f /dev/uhid1 -i -p /var/run/usbhidaction-uhid1.pid 

urtwn0 at uhub5 port 2
urtwn0: Realtek (0x7392) 802.11n WLAN Adapter (0x7811), rev 2.00/2.00, addr 4
urtwn0: MAC/BB RTL8188CUS, RF 6052 1T1R, address 80:1f:02:94:40:12
urtwn0: 1 rx pipe, 2 tx pipes
urtwn0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
urtwn0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps

Externally connected USB Wi-Fi adapter (not included).

uvideo0 at uhub5 port 3 configuration 1 interface 0: Image Processor (0x90c) USB 2.0 PC Cam (0x37c), rev 2.00/0.05, addr 5
video0 at uvideo0: Image Processor (0x90c) USB 2.0 PC Cam (0x37c), rev 2.00/0.05, addr 5

The built-in video camera is supported using standard V4L2 APIs.

$ videoctl -a
info.cap.card=Image Processor (0x90c) USB 2.0
info.cap.driver=uvideo
info.cap.bus_info=usb:00000009
info.cap.version=8.99.17
info.cap.capabilities=0x5000001
info.format.0=YUYV
info.input.0=Camera
info.input.0.type=baseband
info.standard.0=webcam

boot device: ld2
root on ld2a dumps on ld2b

NetBSD supports a wide variety of Allwinner boards. The wiki contains more information about supported Allwinner SoCs and peripherals.