3 files changed, 107 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-nfit b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-nfit
index a1cb44dcb908..e4f76e7eab93 100644
--- a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-nfit
+++ b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-nfit
@@ -202,6 +202,25 @@ Description:
 		functions. See the section named 'NVDIMM Root Device _DSMs' in
 		the ACPI specification.
 
+What:		/sys/bus/nd/devices/ndbusX/nfit/firmware_activate_noidle
+Date:		Apr, 2020
+KernelVersion:	v5.8
+Contact:	linux-nvdimm@lists.01.org
+Description:
+		(RW) The Intel platform implementation of firmware activate
+		support exposes an option let the platform force idle devices in
+		the system over the activation event, or trust that the OS will
+		do it. The safe default is to let the platform force idle
+		devices since the kernel is already in a suspend state, and on
+		the chance that a driver does not properly quiesce bus-mastering
+		after a suspend callback the platform will handle it.  However,
+		the activation might abort if, for example, platform firmware
+		determines that the activation time exceeds the max PCI-E
+		completion timeout. Since the platform does not know whether the
+		OS is running the activation from a suspend context it aborts,
+		but if the system owner trusts driver suspend callback to be
+		sufficient then 'firmware_activation_noidle' can be
+		enabled to bypass the activation abort.
 
 What:		/sys/bus/nd/devices/regionX/nfit/range_index
 Date:		Jun, 2015
diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-nvdimm b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-nvdimm
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..d64380262be8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-nvdimm
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+The libnvdimm sub-system implements a common sysfs interface for
+platform nvdimm resources. See Documentation/driver-api/nvdimm/.
diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/nvdimm/firmware-activate.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/nvdimm/firmware-activate.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..7ee7decbbdc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/driver-api/nvdimm/firmware-activate.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==================================
+NVDIMM Runtime Firmware Activation
+==================================
+
+Some persistent memory devices run a firmware locally on the device /
+"DIMM" to perform tasks like media management, capacity provisioning,
+and health monitoring. The process of updating that firmware typically
+involves a reboot because it has implications for in-flight memory
+transactions. However, reboots are disruptive and at least the Intel
+persistent memory platform implementation, described by the Intel ACPI
+DSM specification [1], has added support for activating firmware at
+runtime.
+
+A native sysfs interface is implemented in libnvdimm to allow platform
+to advertise and control their local runtime firmware activation
+capability.
+
+The libnvdimm bus object, ndbusX, implements an ndbusX/firmware/activate
+attribute that shows the state of the firmware activation as one of 'idle',
+'armed', 'overflow', and 'busy'.
+
+- idle:
+  No devices are set / armed to activate firmware
+
+- armed:
+  At least one device is armed
+
+- busy:
+  In the busy state armed devices are in the process of transitioning
+  back to idle and completing an activation cycle.
+
+- overflow:
+  If the platform has a concept of incremental work needed to perform
+  the activation it could be the case that too many DIMMs are armed for
+  activation. In that scenario the potential for firmware activation to
+  timeout is indicated by the 'overflow' state.
+
+The 'ndbusX/firmware/activate' property can be written with a value of
+either 'live', or 'quiesce'. A value of 'quiesce' triggers the kernel to
+run firmware activation from within the equivalent of the hibernation
+'freeze' state where drivers and applications are notified to stop their
+modifications of system memory. A value of 'live' attempts
+firmware activation without this hibernation cycle. The
+'ndbusX/firmware/activate' property will be elided completely if no
+firmware activation capability is detected.
+
+Another property 'ndbusX/firmware/capability' indicates a value of
+'live' or 'quiesce', where 'live' indicates that the firmware
+does not require or inflict any quiesce period on the system to update
+firmware. A capability value of 'quiesce' indicates that firmware does
+expect and injects a quiet period for the memory controller, but 'live'
+may still be written to 'ndbusX/firmware/activate' as an override to
+assume the risk of racing firmware update with in-flight device and
+application activity. The 'ndbusX/firmware/capability' property will be
+elided completely if no firmware activation capability is detected.
+
+The libnvdimm memory-device / DIMM object, nmemX, implements
+'nmemX/firmware/activate' and 'nmemX/firmware/result' attributes to
+communicate the per-device firmware activation state. Similar to the
+'ndbusX/firmware/activate' attribute, the 'nmemX/firmware/activate'
+attribute indicates 'idle', 'armed', or 'busy'. The state transitions
+from 'armed' to 'idle' when the system is prepared to activate firmware,
+firmware staged + state set to armed, and 'ndbusX/firmware/activate' is
+triggered. After that activation event the nmemX/firmware/result
+attribute reflects the state of the last activation as one of:
+
+- none:
+  No runtime activation triggered since the last time the device was reset
+
+- success:
+  The last runtime activation completed successfully.
+
+- fail:
+  The last runtime activation failed for device-specific reasons.
+
+- not_staged:
+  The last runtime activation failed due to a sequencing error of the
+  firmware image not being staged.
+
+- need_reset:
+  Runtime firmware activation failed, but the firmware can still be
+  activated via the legacy method of power-cycling the system.
+
+[1]: https://docs.pmem.io/persistent-memory/