SPRS825F October 2012 – June 2020 F28M36H33B2 , F28M36H53B2 , F28M36P53C2 , F28M36P63C2
PRODUCTION DATA.
The EPI provides a high-speed parallel bus for interfacing external peripherals and memory. EPI is accessible from both the Master Subsystem and the Control Subsystem. EPI has several modes of operation to enable glueless connectivity to most types of external devices. Some EPI modes of operation conform to standard microprocessor address/data bus protocols, while others are tailored to support a variety of fast custom interfaces, such as those communicating with field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs).
The EPI peripheral can be accessed by the Cortex-M3 CPU, the Cortex-M3 DMA, the C28x CPU, and the C28x DMA over the high-performance AHB bus. The Cortex-M3 CPU and the µDMA drive AHB bus cycles directly through the Cortex-M3 Bus Matrix. The C28x CPU and DMA also connect to the Cortex-M3 Bus Matrix, but not directly. Before entering the Cortex-M3 Bus Matrix, the native C28x CPU and DMA bus cycles are first converted to AHB protocol inside the MEM32-to-AHB Bus Bridge. After that, they pass through the Frequency Gasket to reduce the bus frequency by a factor of 2 or 4. Inside the Cortex-M3 Bus Matrix, the Cortex-M3 bus cycles may have to compete with C28x bus cycles for access to the AHB bus on the way to the EPI peripheral. See Figure 5-16 to see how EPI interfaces to the Concerto Master Subsystem, the Concerto Control Subsystem, Resets, Clocks, and Interrupts.
NOTE
The Control Subsystem has no direct access to EPI in silicon revision 0 devices.
Depending on how the Real-Time Window registers are configured inside the Bus Matrix, the arbitration between the Cortex-M3 and C28x bus cycles is fixed-priority with Cortex-M3 having higher priority than C28x, or the C28x having the option to own the Bus Matrix for a fixed period of time (window)—effectively stalling all Cortex-M3 accesses during that time. Another EPI register inside the Cortex-M3 Bus Matrix is the Memory Protection Register, which enables assignments of chip-select spaces to Cortex-M3 or C28x EPI accesses (or both). The assignments of chip-select spaces prevent a bus cycle (from any processor) that does not own a given chip-select space, from getting through to EPI. The Real-time Window registers are the only EPI-related registers that are configurable by the C28x. The Memory Protection Register is configurable only by the Cortex-M3 CPU, as are all configuration registers inside the EPI peripheral. Figure 5-16 shows the EPI registers and how they relate to individual blocks within the EPI.
Once a bus cycle arrives at the AHB bus interface inside the EPI peripheral, the bus cycle is routed to the General-Purpose Block, SDRAM Block, or the Host Bus Module, depending on the operating mode chosen through the EPI Configuration Register. Write cycles are buffered in a 4-word-deep Write FIFO; therefore, in most cases, the write cycles do not stall the CPU or DMA unless the Write FIFO becomes full. Read cycles can be handled in two different ways: blocking read cycles and nonblocking read cycles. Blocking read cycles are implemented when the content of a Read Data Register is 0. Blocking reads stall the CPU or DMA until the bus transaction completes. Nonblocking read cycles are triggered when a non-zero value is written into a Read Data Register. A non-zero value being written into a Read Data register triggers EPI to autonomously perform multiple data reads in the background (without involving CPU or DMA) according to values stored inside the Read Address Register and the Read Size Register. The incoming data is then temporarily stored in the Non-Blocking Read (NBR) FIFO until an EPI interrupt is generated to prompt the CPU or DMA to read the FIFO without risk of stalling. Furthermore, EPI has actually two sets of Data/Address/Size registers (set 0 and set 1) to enable ping-pong operation of nonblocking reads. In a ping-pong operation, while the previously fetched data is being read by the CPU or DMA from one end of the NBR FIFO, the next set of data words is simultaneously being deposited into the other end of the NBR FIFO.
EPI can directly interrupt the Cortex-M3 CPU, the Cortex-M3 uDMA, and the C28x CPU (but not the C28x DMA) through the EPI interrupt. Typically, EPI interrupts are used to prompt the CPU or DMA to move data to and from EPI. There are four EPI Interrupt registers that control various facets of interrupt generation, clearing, and masking. The EPI Interrupt can trigger µDMA to perform reads and writes through DMA Channels 20 and 22. If a CPU is the intended recipient, the Cortex-M3 CPU is interrupted by NVIC vector 69, and the C28x CPU is interrupted through the INT12/INTx6 vector to the PIE.
During EPI bus cycles, addresses entering the EPI module can propagate unchanged to the pins, or be remapped to different addresses according to values stored in the EPI Address Map Register in conjunction with the most significant bit of the incoming address.
The EPI's three primary operating modes are: the General-Purpose Mode, the SDRAM Mode, and the Host Bus Mode (including 8-bit and 16-bit versions).