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author | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 |
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committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 |
commit | 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 (patch) | |
tree | 0bba044c4ce775e45a88a51686b5d9f90697ea9d /Documentation/arm/Sharp-LH/IOBarrier |
Linux-2.6.12-rc2v2.6.12-rc2
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/arm/Sharp-LH/IOBarrier')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/arm/Sharp-LH/IOBarrier | 45 |
1 files changed, 45 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/arm/Sharp-LH/IOBarrier b/Documentation/arm/Sharp-LH/IOBarrier new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..c0d8853672d --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/arm/Sharp-LH/IOBarrier @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +README on the IOBARRIER for CardEngine IO +========================================= + +Due to an unfortunate oversight when the Card Engines were designed, +the signals that control access to some peripherals, most notably the +SMC91C9111 ethernet controller, are not properly handled. + +The symptom is that some back to back IO with the peripheral returns +unreliable data. With the SMC chip, you'll see errors about the bank +register being 'screwed'. + +The cause is that the AEN signal to the SMC chip does not transition +for every memory access. It is driven through the CPLD from the CS7 +line of the CPU's static memory controller which is optimized to +eliminate unnecessary transitions. Yet, the SMC requires a transition +for every write access. The Sharp website has more information about +the effect this power-conserving feature has on peripheral +interfacing. + +The solution is to follow every write access to the SMC chip with an +access to another memory region that will force the CPU to release the +chip select line. It is important to guarantee that this access +forces the CPU off-chip. We map a page of SDRAM as if it were an +uncacheable IO device and read from it after every SMC IO write +operation. + + SMC IO + BARRIER IO + +Only this sequence is important. It does not matter that there is no +BARRIER IO before the access to the SMC chip because the AEN latch +only needs occurs after the SMC IO write cycle. The routines that +implement this work-around make an additional concession which is to +disable interrupts during the IO sequence. Other hardware devices +(the LogicPD CPLD) have registers in the same the physical memory +region as the SMC chip. An interrupt might allow an access to one of +those registers while SMC IO is being performed. + +You might be tempted to think that we have to access another device +attached to the static memory controller, but the empirical evidence +indicates that this is not so. Mapping 0x00000000 (flash) and +0xc0000000 (SDRAM) appear to have the same effect. Using SDRAM seems +to be faster. Choosing to access an undecoded memory region is not +desirable as there is no way to know how that chip select will be used +in the future. |