FWARC Questions


1. What specifically is the proposal that we are reviewing?

	This is the sun4v bus binding  component of the sun4v/projectQ case.
	(FWARC/2004/510)

	This case describes address formats, properties and methods
	specific to the "sun4v" bus.


2. What is the motivation for it?

	Provides a generic abstraction of a root level bus for
	platforms compliant with this specification.

3. What is its plan?

     	dev-complete, ships with the Ontario Platform

4. Are there related projects in Sun?

	This is part of the sun4v/ProjectQ umbrella case (2004/510)

	sun4v umbrella 			FWARC/2004/510
	sun4v core API			FWARC/2005/116	20050222_john.johnson.3
	sun4v io-api			FWARC/2005/112	20050222_david.kahn.2
	sun4v bus bindings		FWARC/2005/111	20050222_david.kahn
	sun4v machine description	FWARC/2005/115	20050222_john.johnson.2
	sun4v Ontario Interfaces	FWARC/2005/117	20050222_john.johnson.4
	sun4v vBSC			FWARC/2005/081	20050208_jack.hayward
	sun4v vendor-specific FCodes	FWARC/2005/114	20050222_john.johnson
	sun4v "pci" device binding	TBD - fast-track

5. What is the technical content of the project?

	A list of address formats (numeric and textual), properties
	and methods as a template for the "sun4v" root level bus.

6. How is the project delivered into the system?

	These interfaces are implemented and exported by OpenBoot
	which is delivered as part of the platform firmware, and included
	in the firmware consolidation.

7. What are the project's hardware platform dependencies? Is it expected to
work on all systems (Desktop thru servers)?

	The processor must implement the sun4v sun-sparc extensions
	described in the sun4v Architecture Specification.

8. What is its FW operational environment:

	Same as any other Open Firmware bus binding.

9. What is its user interface (tty, graphical, leds, sound, etc.)?

	Open Firmware user interface (standard)

10. What are your project's other external interfaces (exported and
imported)?

	Device nodes and properties that are created as compliant
	with this specification.

11. What are its other significant internal interfaces (inter-subsystem and
inter-invocation)?

	None.

12. Is the interface extensible? How is the interface expected to evolve?

   * How is versioning handled?

	Standard OF versioning.

   * What was the commitment level of the previous version? Can this version
     co-exist with existing standards and with earlier and later versions or
     with alternative implementations (perhaps by other vendors)?

	N/A. This is the first version.

   * What are the clients over which a change should be managed? How is
     transition to a new version to be accomplished? What are the
     consequences to ISV's and their customers?

	The clients are any OS that ports to sun4v.

   * Does this scale from low-end Desktops to high-end Servers? What, if
     any, trade-offs are involved?

	Yes it scales. No known tradeoffs.

13. How do the interfaces adapt to a changing world?

   * What is its relationship with (or difficulties with) System Service
     Processors?

	There is no direct relationship with the service processor
	for the Sun4v Bus Binding

   * What security issues do you address in your project?

	None.

14. What internationalization issues are involved? N/A

     None.

15. How will the project contribute (positively or negatively) to "system
load" and "perceived performance":

   * What are the performance goals of the project? How were they evaluated?
     On what type of test platform?

	N/A

   * Does the application pause for significant amounts of time? Can the
     user interact with the application while it is performing long-duration
     tasks?

	No.

   * Does memory usage or heap space tend to grow with time/load? What
     mechanisms does the user have to use to control this? What happens to
     performance/system load?

	N/A.

   * What are the project's effects on boot time requirements?

	N/A. (for this component)

16. How does the project deal with failure and recovery?

   * How will it respond to failures? (Does it ever require reset? Use of
     stop key? Can it lock up?)

	Standard OF.

   * Does it attempt to isolate and contain the failure to allow for
     automatic recovery?

	Standard OF.

   * How does it communicate a fault event? Does it depend on a working
     console device?

	N/A (hypervisor function)

17. Issues? Please identify the issues which you would like the ARC to
address.

	None.

18. Appendices:

	See case materials.

19. Security

	Standard OF.

	#pragma ident	"@(#)fwarc-18Q.txt	1.3	03/08/21 SMI"