POWER9 Hardware Compatibility List/PCIe Devices

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Compatibility rules

In general, any PCIe device will work providing that an open source driver is available for your operating system. There are some exceptions:

  • Hardware bugs. POWER does not permit errant DMA accesses. If a device tries to access areas of host memory which it is not permitted to access, the device is shut down immediately. This is dissimilar to x86 platforms, which simply silently ignore such attempts. Some badly designed I/O devices have bugs causing them to attempt DMA accesses to random areas of host memory; these devices are unlikely to function correctly on POWER systems unless a workaround is available. Note that devices in full bypass mode may legally have access to all host memory, to avoid this and test driver IOMMU setup pass "iommu=nobypass" to the kernel at startup.
  • I/O space. Starting with POWER9, access to the legacy PCI I/O space is no longer supported; devices or drivers which rely on this will not function. The legacy I/O space has been deprecated for as long as PCIe has existed; generally this will only affect very old PCIe devices which use PCIe to PCI bridge chips to attach old PCI devices to the bus. A small subset of these devices may require legacy I/O space support.
  • Incomplete memory addressing support. The PCIe architecture specifies a 64-bit address space. Some I/O devices try to economize on this by only implementing e.g. 40 bits for their addressing, rendering them incapable of addressing host memory which lies above address 240. (Firmware patches to work around this are pending.)
  • Bifurcation limits. Arbitrary PCIe lane bifurcation is not supported. Devices which split a PCIe slot into multiple connectors (for example, PCIe to M.2 adaptors) will not work unless they have a PCIe switch chip, although the first connector will generally work.

Troubleshooting

If a PCIe device is in a broken state due to being attached/detached from a VM, or due to a transition from Petitboot to the main OS, you may be able to fix it by issuing a hot reset. A script for performing a PCIe hot reset is at File:Pcie hot reset.sh. For background on PCIe resets and how a hot reset differs from the function-level reset performed by echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/$dev/reset, see Alex Forencich's explanation on Stack Exchange.

NICs

Working

  • Broadcom BCM5719
  • Chelsio T6225-SO-CR
  • Mellanox ConnectX-6 EN 200Gb/s Adapter Card (supports CAPI)
  • Silicom PE310G4SPI9/PE310G4SPI9LA quad port 10 GbE SFP+ adapter (ixgbe driver)

Non-working

  • Mellanox ConnectX IB QDR (mlx4 driver)

Wireless Cards

  • Intel Dual-Band Wireless-AC 7260 (Bluetooth untested)
  • Alfa AWUS036NHA Wireless USB Adaptor
    • open source firmware (ath9k_htc) [1]
  • TP-Link TL WN823N RTL8192EU [2]
    • remove "ARCH=$(ARCH)" on line 1710 of the makefile and it compiles fine

NVMe Drives

  • Samsung 950 PRO (with M.2 to PCIe adapter)
  • Samsung 960 EVO / PRO (with M.2 to PCIe adapter)
  • Samsung 970 PRO (with M.2 to PCIe adapter)
  • Samsung 970 EVO Plus (with M.2 to PCIe adapter)
  • Intel Optane 900P NVMe XPoint PCIe
  • Intel Optane 905P NVMe XPoint PCIe AIC
  • WD Black PCIe (with M.2 to PCIe adapter)
  • MyDigitalSSD BPX 480GB (with M.2 to PCIe adapter)

PCIe to M.2 Adapters

Working

Partially working

SAS/SATA Storage Controllers

Working

  • IOCrest SI-PEX40062 (Chipset: Marvell 88SE9235, PCI id 1B4B:9235)
    • Marvell 88SE9230 chipset also confirmed to work
  • Kouwell PE-115H (Chipset: Marvell 88SE9130, PCI id 1b4b:9130)
  • LSI 9300/9200 SAS HBAs
    • May require updating to IT firmware on a x86 machine
  • PM8068-based SAS HBAs
  • Supermicro AOC-SLG3-4E2P 4-port OCuLink adapter
  • Jmicron JMB 363 SATA PCIe card. SATA ports work with Petitboot.
  • MegaRAID 9460-8i

Non-working

  • AXAGON PCES-SA2 (ASMedia chipset)
  • SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 (mvsas driver)
  • MegaRAID 9341-8i - probably a bug in the firmware

Unknown if working (good candidates to test)

Graphics Cards

No display? Check out the GPU Troubleshooting page.

AMD

All AMD GPUs currently have DMA issues (limited to 32-bit, which can cause crashes) due to missing Linux kernel support for DMA windows between 33 and 63 bits in length. The root cause is GPU vendors (and occasionally some non-GPU vendors) cutting costs and only including 40-bit capable (Intel-style) DMA controllers. A compatibility mode is expected to be included in Linux 5.4 and above that will resolve this issue.

  • AMD Radeon HD 5850 - Must disable onboard VGA first. Currently has issues with only using 32-bit DMA.
  • AMD Radeon HD 6450 - Works with default settings (kernel: radeon, X: modesetting or radeon), tested in BE mode
  • AMD Radeon HD 6850 - Disable AST VGA with jumper. 32 bit.
  • AMD Radeon HD 7850 - Disabled onboard VGA. Using amdgpu is highly unstable, radeon driver is usable but has issues with only using 32-bit DMA.
  • AMD Radeon HD 7950 - Must disable onboard VGA first. Currently has issues with only using 32-bit DMA.
  • AMD Radeon R5 220
  • AMD Radeon R5 230 - Works in BE mode (use Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" for Xorg)
  • AMD Radeon R7 240
  • AMD Radeon R9 290X
  • AMD Radeon RX 480
  • AMD Radeon RX 580 – Works with the amdgpu firmware from Ubuntu 19.04 and disabled onboard VGA
    • You may also need a kernel parameter like vga=797 if xinit complains about VESA[3]
  • AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 - Works with Debian Buster with amdgpu. Requires patches to work, somewhat unstable but usable. Cannot use AST Integrated VGA and AMDGPU at the same time without causing conflict. Not tested at this moment for use in petitboot or firmware.
  • AMD Radeon Pro WX4100 (Polaris11 core) - May need at least linux 4.16 in order to get Xorg to work.
  • AMD Radeon Pro WX5100
  • AMD Radeon Pro WX7100 (Polaris10 core) - Available pre-installed on Talos II workstation, server, and desktop configurations.

The core name is important when storing the firmware into the BOOTKERNFW partition in PNOR for use by skiroot.

Non-working

All Navi based cards and later do not have display support enabled in the kernel. A bug report has been filed here.

  • AMD Radeon RX 5700
  • AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT

NVIDIA

  • NVIDIA Corporation G96 [GeForce 9500 GT] (rev a1) - Works in petitboot if onboard VGA is disabled. Currently has issues with only using 32-bit DMA. No firmware needed.
  • NVIDIA RTX 2070 - usable for compute, but not 3D acceleration; integrated by Raptor as part of the Talos II PowerAI Development System configuration

Other

  • ASPEED AST2500. Works in both the main OS (LE mode) and Petitboot. BE mode partially works (doesn't crash, but colors are wrong unless you apply a patch that is harmful to performance).
  • ClimaxDigital CUH195 USB 2.0 Graphic Adapter - Based on DisplayLink DL-3500 chipset. Works in the main OS; not tested with Petitboot but is likely to work there too.
  • EVGA 100-U2-UV12-A1 UV Plus USB VGA Adapter - DisplayLink Based - Petitboot shows up without loading firmware. Not tested in OS.

Unknown if working (good candidates to test)

Sound Cards

Working

  • Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX SB1570 PCIe 5.1 Sound Card
  • Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity PCIe Audio Sound Card (SB0880)
  • AMD Radeon HD 5850 and 7950 (HDMI audio)
  • VANTEC NBA-120U (USB)
  • Sabrent USB External Stereo Sound Adapter (AU-MMSA)
  • Mackie Onyx Blackjack (USB) Recording Interface
  • RME HDSPe AIO (FreeBSD tested)
  • Leveraged Sabrent Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter (model BT-UB40) to connect to wireless Bluetooth headphones, specifically Bose Quiet Comfort 35.

Non-working

  • ASUS Xonar SE - Contains ASMedia USB host controller with errant DMA access flaw
  • Creative Sound Blaster Audigy PCIe RX 7.1 - unable to enable emu10k1 driver on little-endian power9 kernel as driver requires ZONE_DMA

USB Host Controllers

Working

Non-working

In general, USB3 host controllers based on ASMedia chipsets are known to be problematic, due to ASMedia hardware or firmware bugs causing errant DMA accesses to invalid regions of host memory.

  • AXAGON PCEU-43V - chipset Via VL805 - PCI id 1106:3483
  • StarTech PEXUSB314A2V - 2x ASM1142 host controllers and a PCIe switch
  • QNINE USB 3.1 Gen2 (Type-A and Type-C) - ASM1142
    • It's based on the the same reference design as all the other cheap ASM1142 cards, so there's a good chance those won't work either.
  • Rosewill RC-509 - ASM1142
  • Ableconn PU31-2C-2 - ASM2142

Unknown if working (good candidates to test)

TV Tuners

  • Hauppauge WinTV-quadHD
  • Hauppauge WinTV HVR-850 (2040:7240) - ATSC - using Kaffeine

Firewire Host Controllers

Working

Unknown if working (good candidates to test)