SPRUIM2H May 2020 – October 2023 AM2431 , AM2432 , AM2434 , AM6411 , AM6412 , AM6421 , AM6422 , AM6441 , AM6442
The ALE supports software control or automatic aging of agable addresses.
Any time an agable address is seen as a source address entering from a port the source address entry will be marked as touched.
If the aging timer expires or the software sets the [29] AGE_OUT_NOW bit in the CPSW_ALE_CONTROL, the aging process will be started.
The aging process will read each ALE entry and for all entries that are an address with or without VLAN that is also agable, the touch check process will be done.
The touch check process will test the TOUCH bit and if clear, the entry will be marked as free, else the TOUCH bit will be cleared.
What this means is that if the aging interval was programmed as one second, any unused entry could stay in the ALE table for 1.000001 to 1.999999 seconds