Transports & Buses

Everything a host BMC or peer device sends to the controller arrives over a bus and (usually) an MCTP transport. This section covers the transport core and the physical bus drivers.

  • MCTP transport — the base Management Component Transport Protocol layer, plus inter-core IPC and the mailbox. (deep-dive)
  • Bus drivers — I2C, I3C, SPI, UART, USB, and the SSIF SMBus interface. (catalog)
Subsystem Path Role
MCTP src/nv/mctp/ Transport core / binding / composer
IPC src/nv/ipc/ Inter-core (core0↔core1) messaging
Mailbox src/nv/mainbox/ Mailbox primitive
I2C src/nv/i2c/ I2C controller/target, EEPROM cache
I3C src/nv/i3c/ I3C (GPU-facing)
SPI src/nv/spi/ External flash access
UART src/nv/uart/ Serial
USB src/nv/usb/, src/nv/usb_proxy/ HID/SMBus over USB
SSIF src/nv/ssif/ SMBus System Interface (IPMI-style)
VCOM src/nv/vcom/ Virtual COM

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