Level Two Interface
ARM DDI 0301H
Copyright © 2004-2009 ARM Limited. All rights reserved.
8-2
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8.1
About the level two interface
The level two memory interface exists to provide a high-bandwidth interface to second level
caches, on-chip RAM, peripherals, and interfaces to external memory.
It is a key feature in ensuring high system performance, providing a higher bandwidth
mechanism for filling the caches in a cache miss than has existed on previous ARM processors.
The processor level two interconnect system uses the following 64-bit wide AXI interfaces:
•
Instruction Fetch Interface
•
Data Read/Write Interface
•
DMA Interface.
Another interface is also provided, the Peripheral Interface. This is a 32-bit AXI interface.
Figure 8-1 shows the level two interconnect interfaces.
Figure 8-1 Level two interconnect interfaces
These interfaces provide for several simultaneous outstanding transactions, giving the potential
for high performance from level two memory systems that support parallelism, and also for high
utilization of pipelined memories such as SDRAM.
•
No outstanding accesses are issued on the DMA port. The DMA port can issue bursts of
32-bit or 64-bit data when the address is correctly aligned.
•
The data read/write port can issue outstanding accesses. The maximum number of
outstanding accesses it can issue is two reads and two writes, to give a total of four
outstanding accesses.
•
The instruction port can issue outstanding read accesses, up to a maximum of two
outstanding read accesses.
•
No outstanding accesses are issued by the peripheral port.
Each of the four wide interfaces is an AXI interface, with additional signals to support additional
features for the level two memory system for multi-level cache support.
The processor does not drive the following AXI ID signals:
•
ARIDI
•
ARIDRW
•
AWIDRW
•
WIDRW
•
ARIDP
•
AWIDP
•
WIDP
•
ARIDD
•
AWIDD
Processor
Level two
instruction side
controller
Level two data side
controller
DMA
DMA
port
(64-bit)
Peripheral
port
(32-bit)
Data read/write
port
(64-bit)
Instruction fetch
port
(64-bit)