Documentation/trace/intel_th.txt

Intel(R) Trace Hub (TH)
=======================

Overview
--------

Intel(R) Trace Hub (TH) is a set of hardware blocks that produce,
switch and output trace data from multiple hardware and software
sources over several types of trace output ports encoded in System
Trace Protocol (MIPI STPv2) and is intended to perform full system
debugging. For more information on the hardware, see Intel(R) Trace
Hub developer's manual [1].

It consists of trace sources, trace destinations (outputs) and a
switch (Global Trace Hub, GTH). These devices are placed on a bus of
their own ("intel_th"), where they can be discovered and configured
via sysfs attributes.

Currently, the following Intel TH subdevices (blocks) are supported:
  - Software Trace Hub (STH), trace source, which is a System Trace
  Module (STM) device,
  - Memory Storage Unit (MSU), trace output, which allows storing
  trace hub output in system memory,
  - Parallel Trace Interface output (PTI), trace output to an external
  debug host via a PTI port,
  - Global Trace Hub (GTH), which is a switch and a central component
  of Intel(R) Trace Hub architecture.

Common attributes for output devices are described in
Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-intel_th-output-devices, the most
notable of them is "active", which enables or disables trace output
into that particular output device.

GTH allows directing different STP masters into different output ports
via its "masters" attribute group. More detailed GTH interface
description is at Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-intel_th-devices-gth.

STH registers an stm class device, through which it provides interface
to userspace and kernelspace software trace sources. See
Documentation/tracing/stm.txt for more information on that.

MSU can be configured to collect trace data into a system memory
buffer, which can later on be read from its device nodes via read() or
mmap() interface.

On the whole, Intel(R) Trace Hub does not require any special
userspace software to function; everything can be configured, started
and collected via sysfs attributes, and device nodes.

[1] https://software.intel.com/sites/default/files/managed/d3/3c/intel-th-developer-manual.pdf

Bus and Subdevices
------------------

For each Intel TH device in the system a bus of its own is
created and assigned an id number that reflects the order in which TH
devices were emumerated. All TH subdevices (devices on intel_th bus)
begin with this id: 0-gth, 0-msc0, 0-msc1, 0-pti, 0-sth, which is
followed by device's name and an optional index.

Output devices also get a device node in /dev/intel_thN, where N is
the Intel TH device id. For example, MSU's memory buffers, when
allocated, are accessible via /dev/intel_th0/msc{0,1}.

Quick example
-------------

# figure out which GTH port is the first memory controller:

$ cat /sys/bus/intel_th/devices/0-msc0/port
0

# looks like it's port 0, configure master 33 to send data to port 0:

$ echo 0 > /sys/bus/intel_th/devices/0-gth/masters/33

# allocate a 2-windowed multiblock buffer on the first memory
# controller, each with 64 pages:

$ echo multi > /sys/bus/intel_th/devices/0-msc0/mode
$ echo 64,64 > /sys/bus/intel_th/devices/0-msc0/nr_pages

# enable wrapping for this controller, too:

$ echo 1 > /sys/bus/intel_th/devices/0-msc0/wrap

# and enable tracing into this port:

$ echo 1 > /sys/bus/intel_th/devices/0-msc0/active

# .. send data to master 33, see stm.txt for more details ..
# .. wait for traces to pile up ..
# .. and stop the trace:

$ echo 0 > /sys/bus/intel_th/devices/0-msc0/active

# and now you can collect the trace from the device node:

$ cat /dev/intel_th0/msc0 > my_stp_trace