3.2.2.22. UFS

Introduction

Universal Flash Storage (UFS) is high performance mass storage device with a serial interface. Its primarily used as a high performance data storage device for embedded applications. There are JEDEC standards governing UFS device and host controller. UFS adapts MIPI MPHY and MIPI UniPro standards.

This user guide applies to kernel v4.19 and higher.

Supported Devices

  • J721E EVM

Hardware features

Key Features:

  • Supports Universal Flash Storage Host (UFS2.1, JESD220C)

  • Supports Universal Flash Storage Host Controller Interface (UFSHCI, JESD223C)

  • Supports UFS interconnect - MIPI UniPro and MIPI M-PHY

  • Supports Gear 1: 1.46 Gbps, 2-lanes

  • Supports Gear 2: 2.91 Gbps, 2-lanes

  • Supports Gear 3: 5.83 Gbps, 2-lanes

  • Supports 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption

  • Supports аll UFS mandatory SCSI commands required by JEDEC specification

Driver features

Supported Features

  • Linux as standard UFS Host Controller Interface (UFSHCI) driver at drivers/scsi/ufs/ufshcd.c and platform/SoC specific glue layers are located in the same folder.

  • Supports HS Gear3B, 2-lanes

Unsupported Features

  • No support for UFS inline Encryption/Decryption using UFS Crypto Engine

Hardware Architecture and Software Architecure

UFS follows SCSI Architecture Model (SAM) and hence falls unders Linux’s SCSI stack. User space programs can interact with UFS storage device in the same way as any other SCSI devices. Hardware architecture is explained in detail in UFS JEDEC specification JESD220D Host Controller Interface and programming sequence is explained in UFSHCI JEDEC specification JESD223C

UFS storage devices are exposed in Linux as /dev/sdX. Tools such as fdisk can be used to format and store data onto them similar to traditional Hard Disks.

Here is the typical enumeration log of UFS devices

[    4.727525] cdns-ufshcd 4e84000.ufs: ufshcd_print_pwr_info:[RX, TX]: gear=[1, 1], lane[1, 1], pwr[SLOWAUTO_MODE, SLOWAUTO_MODE], rate = 0
[    4.763158] cdns-ufshcd 4e84000.ufs: ufshcd_print_pwr_info:[RX, TX]: gear=[3, 3], lane[2, 2], pwr[FAST MODE, FAST MODE], rate = 2
[    4.776497] cdns-ufshcd 4e84000.ufs: ufshcd_find_max_sup_active_icc_level: Regulator capability was not set, actvIccLevel=0
[    4.787805] scsi 0:0:0:49488: Well-known LUN    TOSHIBA  THGAF8G8T23BAILB 0300 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[    4.807335] scsi 0:0:0:49476: Well-known LUN    TOSHIBA  THGAF8G8T23BAILB 0300 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[    4.816015] cdns-ufshcd 4e84000.ufs: ufshcd_scsi_add_wlus: BOOT WLUN not found
[    4.828531] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     TOSHIBA  THGAF8G8T23BAILB 0300 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[    4.836834] sd 0:0:0:0: Power-on or device reset occurred
[    4.842379] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 8192 4096-byte logical blocks: (33.6 MB/32.0 MiB)
[    4.842404] scsi 0:0:0:1: Direct-Access     TOSHIBA  THGAF8G8T23BAILB 0300 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[    4.857817] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[    4.862629] sd 0:0:0:1: Power-on or device reset occurred
[    4.862715] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 32 00 10
[    4.868197] sd 0:0:0:1: [sdb] 7808000 4096-byte logical blocks: (32.0 GB/29.8 GiB)
[    4.880653] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA
[    4.889170] sd 0:0:0:1: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[    4.889204] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Optimal transfer size 65536 bytes
[    4.893959] sd 0:0:0:1: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 32 00 10
[    4.904957] sd 0:0:0:1: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA
[    4.905701] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
[    4.918093] sd 0:0:0:1: [sdb] Optimal transfer size 65536 bytes
[    4.924852] sd 0:0:0:1: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

UFS Logical Units

UFS flash device is composed of memory blocks that are mapped to different Logical Units (LUs). UFS device address space is organized in several memory areas configurable by the user. In particular, such memory areas are denoted as logical units and characterized by the fact that they have independent logical addressable spaces starting from the logical address zero. Thus, a logical unit (LU) is an externally addressable, independent, processing entity that processes SCSI tasks (commands) and performs task management functions. Each logical unit is independent of other logical units in a device

In addition to the logical units, the UFS device supports the following well known logical units for specific purposes: UFS Device, REPORT LUNS, Boot and RPMB. Logical units are addressed by the LUN (logical unit number), while well known logical unit are addressed by the W-LUN (well known logical unit number). In particular, the UFS device shall support: The number of logical units specified by bMaxNumberLU. Each of them configurable as boot logical units with a maximum of two. One RPMB well known logical unit (W-LUN = 44h, LUN field in UPIU = C4h). RPMB well known logical unit may be further configured into up to four separate RPMB regions (RPMB region 0 - RPMB region 3). Two logical units can be configured as boot logical unit, with only one of them active and readable through the Boot well known logical unit (W-LUN = 30h) for the execution of the system boot (see UFS Boot section of JEDEC Spec). The RPMB well known logical unit is accessed by authenticated operations by a well defined security algorithm. The other logical units will be used to fulfill other use cases.

Logical Block Provisioning

Logical Block Provisioning is the concept that describes the relationship between the logical block address space and the physical memory resources that supports the logical address space.

Note

By default, Device comes with no LUs provisioned therefore device must be provisioned to be able to store anything in the device.

Interacting with UFS device from userspace:

UFS and SCSI layer supports something called Block SCSI Generic (BSG) Device which exposes SCSI device such as UFS as generic device to Userspace. UFS flash can be accessed at /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg.

ufs-tool (part of SDK) can be used to interact with UFS device from userspace:

UFS descriptors

A Descriptor is a block or page of parameters that describe something about a Device. For example, there are Device Descriptors, Configuration Descriptors, Unit Descriptors, etc. In general, all Descriptors are readable, some may be write once, others may have a write protection mechanism. The Configuration Descriptor is writeable and allows modification of the device configuration set by the manufacturer. More details in JEDEC UFS specification. ufs-tool can be used to read any of the descriptor. See tool help for more details.

Provisioning UFS device using ufs-tool

UFS device can be provisioned by writing configuration descriptor to the flash. You can read current configuration of UFS device using:

root@j721e-evm:~# ufs-tool desc -t 1 -p /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLength = 0x90
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bDescriptorType = 0x1
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bConfDescContinue = 0x0
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bBootEnable = 0x1
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: bDescrAccessEn = 0x1
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x5]: bInitPowerMode = 0x1
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x6]: bHighPriorityLUN = 0x7f
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x7]: bSecureRemovalType = 0x0
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bInitActiveICCLevel = 0x0
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: wPeriodicRTCUpdate = 0x0
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xc]: bRPMBRegionEnable = 0x0
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xd]: bRPMBRegion1Size = 0x0
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xe]: bRPMBRegion2Size = 0x0
Config Device Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xf]: bRPMBRegion3Size = 0x0
Config 0 Unit Descriptor:
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLUEnable = 0x1
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bBootLunID = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bLUWriteProtect = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bMemoryType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: dNumAllocUnits = 0x1900
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bDataReliability = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: bLogicalBlockSize = 0xc
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xa]: bProvisioningType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xb]: wContextCapabilities = 0x0
Config 1 Unit Descriptor:
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLUEnable = 0x1
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bBootLunID = 0x1
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bLUWriteProtect = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bMemoryType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: dNumAllocUnits = 0x9
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bDataReliability = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: bLogicalBlockSize = 0xc
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xa]: bProvisioningType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xb]: wContextCapabilities = 0x0
Config 2 Unit Descriptor:
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLUEnable = 0x1
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bBootLunID = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bLUWriteProtect = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bMemoryType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: dNumAllocUnits = 0x1
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bDataReliability = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: bLogicalBlockSize = 0xc
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xa]: bProvisioningType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xb]: wContextCapabilities = 0x0
Config 3 Unit Descriptor:
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLUEnable = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bBootLunID = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bLUWriteProtect = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bMemoryType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: dNumAllocUnits = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bDataReliability = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: bLogicalBlockSize = 0xc
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xa]: bProvisioningType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xb]: wContextCapabilities = 0x0
Config 4 Unit Descriptor:
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLUEnable = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bBootLunID = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bLUWriteProtect = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bMemoryType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: dNumAllocUnits = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bDataReliability = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: bLogicalBlockSize = 0xc
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xa]: bProvisioningType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xb]: wContextCapabilities = 0x0
Config 5 Unit Descriptor:
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLUEnable = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bBootLunID = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bLUWriteProtect = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bMemoryType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: dNumAllocUnits = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bDataReliability = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: bLogicalBlockSize = 0xc
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xa]: bProvisioningType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xb]: wContextCapabilities = 0x0
Config 6 Unit Descriptor:
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLUEnable = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bBootLunID = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bLUWriteProtect = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bMemoryType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: dNumAllocUnits = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bDataReliability = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: bLogicalBlockSize = 0xc
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xa]: bProvisioningType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xb]: wContextCapabilities = 0x0
Config 7 Unit Descriptor:
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x0]: bLUEnable = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x1]: bBootLunID = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x2]: bLUWriteProtect = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x3]: bMemoryType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x4]: dNumAllocUnits = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x8]: bDataReliability = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0x9]: bLogicalBlockSize = 0xc
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xa]: bProvisioningType = 0x0
Config Descriptor: [Byte offset 0xb]: wContextCapabilities = 0x0
Config Descriptor was written into config_desc_data_ind_0 file

This also dumps descriptor in binary format into file called config_desc_data_ind_0. Edit file as necessary and write file back to device using:

ufs-tool desc -t 1 -w config_desc_data_ind_0 -p /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg

Note

This erases all existing data on flash and creates new partition. There is a vendor specific limit on how many times device can be re-provisioned or re-partitioned. Also, this setup is non-volatile and persists across Power-On-Resets and needs to be done only once.

For J721E EVM, pre populated configuration descriptor binary file can be found below. So, to provision UFS flash on J721e EVM:

  • Download the file

  • Execute below command to flash descriptor and reboot the board to see new partitions

ufs-tool desc -t 1 -w config_desc_data_ind_0 -p /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg

This creates two LUs on device. A Boot LUN of 32MB and rest of the flash (~32GB) is formated as general data area (for filesystem etc) These two partitions appear as tow SCSI block devices eg /dev/sda and /dev/sdb in Linux.

Getting current speed gear and lane count:

User can dump all UFS UniPro attributes.

For Active Data lanes:

root@j721e-evm:~# ufs-tool uic -t 1 -i 0x1560 -p /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg
[0x1560]PA_ActiveTxDataLanes                          : local = 0x00000002, peer = 0x00000002
root@j721e-evm:~# ufs-tool uic -t 1 -i 0x1580 -p /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg
[0x1580]PA_ActiveRxDataLanes                          : local = 0x00000002, peer = 0x00000002

Value of 2 indicates 2 lanes are active

For Gear Speed:

root@j721e-evm:~# ufs-tool uic -t 1 -i 0x1568 -p /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg
[0x1568]PA_TxGear                                     : local = 0x00000003, peer = 0x00000003
root@j721e-evm:~# ufs-tool uic -t 1 -i 0x1583 -p /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg
[0x1583]PA_RxGear                                     : local = 0x00000003, peer = 0x00000003

Value of 3 indicates HS Gear3 is active

For HS Gear Series

root@j721e-evm:~# ufs-tool uic -t 1 -i 0x156a -p /dev/bsg/ufs-bsg
[0x156a]PA_HSSeries                                   : local = 0x00000002, peer = 0x00000002

A value of 2 indicates series B is active