Will unprocessed awvalid signals be stored in AXI Crossbar?
omeag opened this issue · comments
Hi, sir
I see that S_THREADS is set to 2 by default, which means that SI can initiate two outstanding transfers.
So will the second awvalid and awaddr signal be stored?
During simulation, I did not keep awvalid high all the time. The results show that it will not process the second write operation.
How does your AXI crossbar handle outstanding transfers?
Well, you have to respect the handshake protocol. *valid MUST be held high until *ready is asserted. If you don't do that, things break in strange ways.
So if I set S_THREADS to 3 and initiate three write operations, then I need to keep awvalid high until all three write operations are complete, right?
But the write address signal will be staged? Will the second write address be lost?
I recommend reading the AXI specification.
The short story is this: data is ONLY transferred when BOTH *ready and *valid are asserted at the same time.
This means that if *ready is low, the only thing you can do is set up a new operation (set all of the signals and set *valid = 1). If *valid is already high, you must wait for *ready to be asserted. If you change anything when *valid = 1 and *ready = 0, Bad Things will happen (lost transactions, unpredictable behavior, etc.). Similarly, when both *ready and *valid are asserted, you must either deassert tvalid, or set up a new operation. All of this follows from data being transferred only when both *ready and *valid are asserted at the same time.
The spec also states that you are not allowed to wait for *ready to be asserted before starting a new operation. The sink is allowed to wait for *valid before asserting *ready, but the source is not allowed to do the converse as this could result in a deadlock.
So what is the role of OUTSTANDING?
As you said, it is necessary to keep awvalid and awaddr until awready is high and a successful handshake is done.
However, the Outstanding function allows the Slave Interface initiate multiple operations while waiting for AWREADY, right?
But if I additionally initiate multiple operations while waiting for AWREADY, I have to keep AWVALID and AWADDR ? So in this way, that means I can only initiate ONE another operation, and keep every signal until AWREADY turns low.
Where did I misunderstand?
No, it means you can issue multiple AW transactions before they are completed on B.
I understand completely now. Thank you so much for your explanation!