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Re: SVGA cards on PCI and store gathering



> 
> I'm curious (I am a software guy, not a hardware guy)... Every time I've
> observed a PCI bus (Triton based Pentium systems) with a logic analyzer, I've
> seen at least one IDLE cycle between each complete transaction sequence.  Is
> this required by the protocol or just sloppy implementation on the part of the
> triton PCI bridge?
> 
> -jrp
>

Yes, at least one idle cycle is required, unless the host bridge is set to
perform fast back-to-back transfers.  But fast back-to-back transfers
are difficult because the bridge must know the target memory/io boundaries,
to avoid trying to do a back-to-back transfer to different targets.  Further,
fast back-to-back transfers can only occur for writes (since reads require
a turnaround cycle between the last data transfer and the address cycle).

-Tom

--
Tom Hicks			Fore Systems
Design Engineer			174 Thorn Hill Rd
Adapter Group			Warrendale, PA 15086
thicks@fore.com	
 
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