GPU

Mapping Memory

First, to map a memory region on the GPU Address Space, caching needs to be disabled by using svcSetMemoryAttribute. The Address passed is the Virtual Address of the region that will be mapped, the size is the region size, and State0/1 are both set to 8 to disable caching of the memory region. This is done to ensure that the GPU can actually "see" the data written there, and it doesn't get stuck on some cache.

Then, NVMAP_IOC_CREATE is used to create a nvmap object with the desired size. After, NVMAP_IOC_ALLOC is used to allocate the memory on the GPU Address Space, and map data on the process Address Space into the GPU Address Space, by passing the Virtual Address as the input addr parameter, and also the Handle returned from NVMAP_IOC_CREATE. Lastly, the actual mapping is done by using NVGPU_AS_IOCTL_MAP_BUFFER_EX, and the GPU Virtual Address is returned on the offset parameter. It's also possible to manually set the offset where the mapping should be made on the GPU Address Space, by passing the address on the "offset" parameter, and setting the bit 0 of the flags parameter to 1. However, for this to work, the desired GPU Virtual Address needs to be previously reserved using NVGPU_AS_IOCTL_ALLOC_SPACE.

The above process is used to map all data that will be used by the GPU, like Textures, Command Lists (a.k.a. Push Buffers), Vertex/Index buffers and Shaders. They usually have their own mapping, but Command Lists can share the same mapping.

FIFO Commands

The GPU implements a variation of Tegra's push buffer format for it's PFIFO engine. PFIFO is a special engine responsible for receiving user command lists and routing them to the appropriate engines (2D, 3D, DMA).

Commands are submitted to the GPU's PFIFO engine through NVGPU_IOCTL_CHANNEL_SUBMIT_GPFIFO.

This ioctl takes an array of gpfifo entries where each entry points to a FIFO command list. This list is composed of alternating 32-bit words containing FIFO commands and their respective arguments.

Command Structure

Bits	Description
12-0	Method
15-13	Subchannel
28-16	Argument count (in 32-bits Words) or inline data (see below)
31-29	Submission mode

Note: Methods are treated as 4-byte addressable locations, and hence their numbers are written down multiplied by 4.

Note: The command's arguments, when present, follow the command word immediately.

Submission mode

Mode	Description	Offical name
0	Increasing mode (old)
1	Increasing mode - Tells PFIFO to read as much arguments as specified by argument count, while automatically incrementing the method value. This means that each argument will be written to a different method location.	INCR
2	Non-increasing mode (old)
3	Non-increasing mode - Tells PFIFO to read as much arguments as specified by argument count. However, all arguments will be written to the same method location.	NONINCR
4	Inline mode - Tells PFIFO to read inline data from bits 28-16 of the command word, thus eliminating the need to pass additional words for the arguments.	IMM
5	Increase-once mode - Tells PFIFO to read as much arguments as specified by argument count and automatically increments the method value once only.

Command List

All methods with values < 0x100 are special and executed by the PFIFO's DMA puller. The others are forwarded to the engine object currently bound to a given subchannel.

Command	Method	Subchannel	Arg Count	Mode	Name
0x2001?000	0x0000	Variable	1	1	BindObject
0xA0020E00	0x3800	0	2	5	BeginTransformFeedback
0xA0030E30	0x38C0	0	3	5	DrawArrays
0xA0050E36	0x38D8	0	5	5	DrawElements
0xA0020E2E	0x38B8	0	2	5	PopDebugGroupId
0xA0040E2C	0x38B0	0	4	5	PushDebugGroup
0x2001054C	0x1530	0	1	1	ResetCounter
0x8001047F	0x11FC	0	1	4	ResolveDepthBuffer
0x200104C4	0x1310	0	1	1	SetAlphaRef
0x200404C7	0x131C	0	4	1	SetBlendColor
0x2001064F	0x1BD0	0	1	1	SetDepthClamp
0x200200CD	0x0334	0	2	1	SetInnerTessellationLevels
0x200204EC	0x13B0	0	2	1	SetLineWidth
0x200400C9	0x0324	0	4	1	SetOuterTessellationLevels
0x8???0373	0x0DCC	0	Variable	4	SetPatchSize
0x20010546	0x1518	0	1	1	SetPointSize
0x20030554	0x1550	0	3	1	SetRenderEnableConditional
0x200403EF	0x0FBC	0	4	1	SetSampleMask
0x200103D9	0x0F64	0	1	1	SetTiledCacheTileSize
0x20020047	0x011C	0	2	1	SetGraphMacroEntry
0xA???0045	0x0114	0	Variable	5	SetGraphMacroCode

Note: These still need to be heavily verified and could be wrong.

BindObject

In order to bind an engine object to a specific subchannel, method 0 (BindObject) must be used first. The target subchannel is specified in bits 15-13 of the command word.

After the engine object is bound to the desired subchannel, setting it's value in bits 15-13 of any subsequent command word will make PFIFO forward the command to the target engine.

This method only takes one argument, an engine ID.

Engine IDs

ID	Engine
0x902D	FERMI_TWOD_A (2D)
0xB197	MAXWELL_B (3D)
0xB1C0	MAXWELL_COMPUTE_B
0xA140	KEPLER_INLINE_TO_MEMORY_B
0xB0B5	MAXWELL_DMA_COPY_A (DMA)

Fences

Command lists can contain fences to ensure that commands are executed on the correct order, and subsequent commands are only sent when the previously sent commands were already processed by the GPU. Fences uses the QUERY_* commands, and works like this:

• First, QUERY_ADDRESS_HIGH and QUERY_ADDRESS_LOW commands are added to the Command List, with the High/Low 32 bits part of the 64-bits GPU Virtual Address where the fence is located. This GPU Virtual Address needs to be mapped to the process Virtual Address beforehand.
• Then, QUERY_SEQUENCE is added with a sequential number. This number is basically a incrementing counter, so the first Command List can have QUERY_SEQUENCE = 1, the next one QUERY_SEQUENCE = 2, 3, 4... and so on.
• Finally, QUERY_GET is added and contains the mode and other unknown data.

The above commands are added using the increasing mode, since the Ids for all those 4 registers are sequential.

QUERY_GET Structure

Bits	Description
1-0	Mode
4	Fence
15-12	Unit

QUERY_GET Mode

Value	Mode
0	Write
1	Sync
2	Write ?
3	Write ?

TODO: Move this to a separate page with all GPU Commands with descriptions. Also figure out what the other values mean.

Some of the other fields are still unknown/unobserved.

Official games will set Mode to 0, Fence to 1 and Unit to 0xF. The QUERY_SEQUENCE value is then written by the GPU to the address pointed to by QUERY_ADDRESS. On the CPU side, the game code should wait until the value at the address pointed to by QUERY_ADDRESS is >= to the last written SEQUENCE value. Official code waits for this condition to be true on a loop, and won't send any further commands before that.

Vertex Data Submission

Note: This is a observation on how the game Puyo Puyo Tetris sends textured squares to the GPU.

1. VERTEX_ATTRIB_FORMAT (0-15) are set (only the first 3 are really used, the rest are set float, with Size = 1 and offset at 0).
2. VERTEX_ARRAY_FETCH (0) is set with the lower 12 bits set to 0x1c (Stride) and bit 12 to 1 (Enabled).
3. VERTEX_ARRAY_START_HIGH/LOW (0) are set to the GPU Virtual Address where the Vertex Data is located.
4. VERTEX_ARRAY_LIMIT_HIGH/LOW (0) are set to the GPU Virtual Address where the Vertex Data is located, plus the Vertex Data size in bytes minus 1.
5. VERTEX_BEGIN_GL is used with the primitive type set to TRIANGLE_STRIP.
6. VERTEX_BUFFER_FIRST with value 0 (indicating the index of the first primitive to render?).
7. VERTEX_BUFFER_COUNT is set to 4, because the Vertex Buffer with the square has 4 vertices.
8. VERTEX_END_GL is used with value 0 (currently unknown what this value means).

Texture View

Texture information such as address, format and size is sent to the GPU through a structure know as Texture View (a.k.a. Texture Image Control, or TIC). Each texture that the game uses needs a separate TIC, and those TICs are written to a table, one after the other. Each TIC entry has 0x20 bytes, and is composed of 8 32-bits words where the texture information is packed.

The index of the TIC entries that should be used by the shader is sent to the GPU with the CB_POS/CB_DATA (0) methods. Games usually follows the following steps to write the TIC entry indexes:

• CB_ADDRESS_HIGH/LOW method is used to set the GPU Virtual Address of the Const Buffer.
• CB_POS is used to set the write offset of the Const Buffer to 0x20 + n * 4, where n is the is the index of the active texture that will be used by the shader (?).
• CB_DATA (0) method is used to write the value into the Const Buffer. The value is a word where the lower 20 bits is the TIC index.

The address of a given TIC entry can be calculates as:

tic_entry_address = tic_base_address + tic_index * 0x20

Where tic_base_address is the address written to TIC_ADDRESS_HIGH/LOW (methods 0x1574 and 0x1578), tic_index is the lower 20 bits of the word written into the Const Buffer with CB_DATA (0), and 0x20 is the size of each TIC entry in bytes.

Note: More research still needs to be done on the Const Buffer and how it is used by the shader.

TIC Structure

Word	Bits	Description
0	6-0	Texture Format
0	9-7	R Channel Data Type
0	12-10	G Channel Data Type
0	15-13	B Channel Data Type
0	18-16	A Channel Data Type
1	31-0	Lower 32-bits of the Texture GPU Virtual Address
2	15-0	Higher 16-bits of the Texture GPU Virtual Address
4	15-0	Texture Width minus 1
5	15-0	Texture Height minus 1

Channel Data Type

Value	Type
1	SNORM
2	UNORM
3	SINT
4	UINT
5	SNORM_FORCE_FP16
6	UNORM_FORCE_FP16
7	FLOAT

References

FIFO engine overview: [1]

Method values from the Fermi family GPU (a bit older than the Tegra X1, but values seems to be mostly the same): [2]

TIC structure used on a Maxwell GPU: [3]

Values for some types used on the above XML: [4]

Command word packing code used on Mesa3d: [5]

TIC entry pack/write code used on Mesa3d: [6]