How to debug why your PCIe device doesn't enumerate during bring up
Notes from bringing up a PCIe WiFi module on i.MX8MQ; symptoms and how to diagnose them. Phy link never came up — what does this mean? This message is typically seen in dmesg as shown below. [ 3.828121] imx6q-pcie 33800000.pcie: iATU: unroll T, 4 ob, 4 ib, align 64K, limit 4G [ 4.807241] imx6q-pcie 33c00000.pcie: Phy link never came up [ 4.841482] imx6q-pcie 33800000.pcie: Phy link never came up [ 5.821279] imx6q-pcie 33c00000.pcie: Phy link never came up [ 5.830481] imx6q-pcie 33c00000.pcie: PCI host bridge to bus 0001:00 [ 5.854997] imx6q-pcie 33800000.pcie: Phy link never came up [ 5.862205] imx6q-pcie 33800000.pcie: PCI host bridge to bus 0000:00 It means one of the following The PCIe peripheral is not powered up. PCIe reset is not deasserted, so the chip is in reset. This could be because the DTB is deasserting an incorrect GPIO. Reference clock is not enabled Using the incorrect PCIe controller in the device tree. As we can see that both the PCIe controllers can report this. So first determine which controller is the peripheral hooked to. More on this in the next section. Which PCIe controller is my device on? ( &pcie0 vs &pcie1 ) The rule here is to match by address and not by label/name. If the schematic calls out controllers as PCIE1 and PCIE2, and the device tree lists pcie0 and pcie1, understand the mapping. The DTS label is arbitrary - match by register base ( @address in the node name), which is the same in the DTS reg and the reference memory map. For definitive addresses look in the .dtsi , as sometimes the manuals are misleading. Given below is a mapping table for i.MX8MQ DTS. | ADDRESS (in .dtsi) | Silicon (RM) Label &pcie0 | 0x33800000 | PCIe1 &pcie1 | 0x33c00000 | PCIe2 The addresses are listed in the chip’s memory layout are from processor reference manual. Below is snapshot from the i.MX8MQ reference manual, where the layout for the core A-53 is listed. Start Address | End Address | Size | Description 3381_0000 | 3381_3FFF | 4MB | PCIe-2 << inco