Bug#1033061: linux: Enable Intel In-Field Scan (IFS)
Source: linux
Version: 6.1.15-1
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch, sid
X-Debbugs-Cc: miguel.bernal.marin@linux.intel.com, jair.gonzalez@linux.intel.com
Dear Maintainer,
Please enable the Intel In-Field Scan (IFS) driver as module.
Intel In-Field Scan is to be supported with upcoming CPUs (Xeon Saphire
Rapids) and allows for initiating circuit-level tests on a CPU core for
detecting hardware problems not caught by parity or ECC checks [1].
Future CPUs will support more than one type of test which will show up with
a new platform-device instance-id, for now only .0 is exposed [2].
As for what all of these silicon-level hardware tests that will be conducted,
that isn't entirely clear. This proposed Intel IFS kernel driver is just the
infrastructure for handling In-Field Scan while the tests themselves will be
loaded as a binary similar to the Intel CPU microcode. The Intel IFS tests will
be loaded from a file and are specific to particular CPU Family/Model/Stepping.
These files are authenticated prior to use and when loaded stored within secure
memory [3].
It was marked as BROKEN at c483e7ea10fa ("platform/x86/intel/ifs: Mark as
BROKEN") in v5.19-rc1 upstream because a suggested change to the IFS code
has shown that the userspace API needs a bit more work.
The solution finally landed at v6.2 and the BROKEN status was removed at
1a63b5808286 ("Revert "platform/x86/intel/ifs: Mark as BROKEN"") where the
issues with user interface [4] to load scan test images have been addressed.
The solutions is not a "bugfix" so the patches won't be backported to v6.1.
A MR was created at:
https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/linux/-/merge_requests/680
where the patches involved the solutions where backported and was enabled in
the Kconfig.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-In-Field-Scan-IFS
[2] https://docs.kernel.org/x86/ifs.html
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-In-Field-Scan
[4] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/26102aca-a730-ddf8-d024-2e7367696757@redhat.com/
Thanks,
Miguel
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