# RISC-V architecture documentation

This section contains documentation about coreboot on RISC-V architecture.

## Mode usage

All stages run in M mode.

Payloads have a choice of managing M mode activity: they can control everything or nothing.

Payloads run from the romstage (i.e. rampayloads) are started in M mode. The payload must, for example, prepare and install its own SBI.

Payloads run from the ramstage are started in S mode, and trap delegation will have been done. These payloads rely on the SBI and can not replace it.

## Stage handoff protocol

On entry to a stage or payload (including SELF payloads),

- all harts are running.

- A0 is the hart ID.

- A1 is the pointer to the Flattened Device Tree (FDT).

- A2 contains the additional program calling argument:

  - cbmem_top for ramstage

  - the address of the payload for opensbi

## Additional payload handoff requirements

The location of cbmem should be placed in a node in the FDT.

## OpenSBI

In case the payload doesn’t install it’s own SBI, like the RISCV-PK does, OpenSBI can be used instead. It’s loaded into RAM after coreboot has finished loading the payload. coreboot then will jump to OpenSBI providing a pointer to the real payload, which OpenSBI will jump to once the SBI is installed.

Besides providing SBI it also sets protected memory regions and provides a platform independent console.

The OpenSBI code is always run in M mode.

## Trap delegation

Traps are delegated to the payload.

## SMP within a stage

At the beginning of each stage, all harts save 0 are spinning in a loop on a semaphore. At the end of the stage harts 1..max are released by changing the semaphore.

A possible way to do this is to have a pointer to a struct containing variables, e.g.

    struct blocker {
    	void (*fn)(); // never returns
    }

The hart blocks until fn is non-null, and then calls it. If fn returns, we will panic if possible, but behavior is largely undefined.

Only hart 0 runs through most of the code in each stage.