AHB protocol interview questions and answer part1 ?

1. The specification recommends that only 16 wait states are used. What should you do if more than
16 cycles are needed?
For some slaves it is acceptable to insert more than 16 wait states. For example, a serial boot ROM which is only ever accessed at initial power upcould insert a larger number of wait states and it would not affect the calculation of the system performance and latency once system power up has been completed. For other slaves a number of options exist. A SPLIT or RETRY response could be used to indicate that the slave is not yet able to perform the requested data transfer, or the slave could be accessed either in response to interrupts or after polling a status register, in either case indicating that the slave is now able to respond in an acceptable number of cycles.
2. Why is a burst not allowed to cross a 1 kilobyte boundary?
If an AHB slave samples HSELx at the start of a burst transaction, it knows it will be selected for the duration of the burst. Also, a slave which is not selected at the start of a burst will know that it will not become selected until a new burst is started. 1 kilobyte is the smallest area an AHB slave may occupy in the memory map. Therefore, if a burst did cross a 1 kilobyte boundary, the access could start accessing one slave at the beginning of the burst and then switch to another on the boundary, which must not happen for the above reason. The 1 kilobyte boundary has been chosen as it is large enough to allow reasonable length bursts, but small enough that peripherals can be aligned to the 1 kilobyte boundary without using up too much of
the available memory map.
3. Can an AHB master be connected directly to an AHB slave?
Any slave which does not use SPLIT responses can be connected directly to an AHB master. If the slave does use SPLIT responses then a simplified version of the arbiter is also required. If an AHB master is connected directly to an AHB slave it is important to ensure that the slave drives HREADY high during reset and that the select signal HSEL for the slave is tied permanently high.
4. What is the state of the AHB signals during reset?
The specification states that during reset the bus signals should be at valid levels. This simply means that the signals should be logic ‘0’ or ‘1’, but not Hi-Z. The actual logic levels driven are left up to the designer. HTRANS is the only signal specified during reset, with a mandatory value of IDLE.
It is important that HREADY is high during reset. If all slaves in the system drive HREADY high during reset then this will ensure that this is the case. However, if slaves are used which do not drive HREADY high during reset it should be ensured that a slave which does drive HREADY high is selected at reset.
5. Can a BUSY transfer occur at the end of a burst?
A BUSY transfer can only occur at the end of an undefined length burst (INCR). A BUSY transfer cannot occur at the end of a fixed length burst (SINGLE, INCR4, WRAP4, INCR8, WRAP8, INCR16, WRAP16).
6. What is a default slave?
If the memory map of a system does not define the full 4 gigabyte address space then a default slave is required, which is selected when an access is attempted to the empty areas of the memory map. The default slave should use an OKAY response for IDLE/BUSY transfers and an ERROR response sequence for NONSEQ/SEQ transfers.
7. Is a default slave really necessary?
If the entire 4 gigabyte address space is defined then a default slave is not required. If, however, there are undefined areas in the memory map then it is important to ensure that a spurious access to a nonexistent address location will not lock up the system. The functionality of the default slave is extremely simple and it will often make sense to implement this within the decoder.
8. Is a dummy master really necessary?
A dummy master is necessary in any system which has a slave that can give SPLIT transfer responses. The dummy master is required so that something can be granted the bus if all the other masters have received a SPLIT response. No logic is required for the dummy master and it can be implemented by simply tying off the inputs to the master address/control multiplexer for the dummy master position. The requirements for a dummy
master are that HTRANS is driven to IDLE, HLOCK is driven low, and all other master outputs are driven to legal values.
9. Is it specified that HPROT, HSIZE and HWRITE remain constant throughout a burst?
Yes, the control signals must remain constant throughout the duration of a burst.
10. What default state should be used for the HREADY and HRESP outputs from a slave?
It is recommended that the default value for HREADY is high and the default value for HRESP is OKAY. This combination ensures that the slave will respond correctly to IDLE transfers to the slave, even if the slave is in some form of power saving mode.
11. Is HREADY an input or an output from slaves?
An AHB slave must have the HREADY signal as both an input and an output. HREADY is required as an output from a slave so that the slave can extend the data phase of a transfer. HREADY is also required as an input so that the slave can determine when the previously selected slave has completed its final transfer and the first data phase transfer for this slave is about to commence. Each AHB Slave should have an HREADY output signal (conventionally named HREADYOUT) which is connected to the Slave-to-Master Multiplexer. The output of this multiplexer is the global HREADY signal which is routed to all masters on the AHB and is also fed back to all slaves as the HREADY input.
12. How many masters can there be in an AHB system?
The AHB specification caters for up to 16 masters. However, allowing for a dummy bus master means the maximum number of real bus masters is actually 15. By convention bus master number 0 is allocated to the dummy bus master.
13. Can a master change the address/control signals during a waited transfer?
Yes. If the address/control signals are indicating an IDLE transfer then the master can change to a real transfer (NONSEQ) when HREADY is low.
However, if a master is indicating a real transfer (NONSEQ or SEQ) then it cannot cancel this during awaited transfer unless it receives a SPLIT, RETRY or ERROR response.
14. When a master rebuilds a burst which has been terminated early are there any limitations on how
it rebuilds the burst?
The only limitation is that the master uses legal burst combinations to rebuild the burst. For example, if a master was performing an 8 beat burst,but had only completed 3 transfers before losing control of the bus, then the remaining 5 transfers could be performed either by using a 1 beat SINGLE burst followed by a 4 beat INCR4 burst, or it could be performed using a 5 beat undefined length INCR burst. For simplicity it is recommended that masters use INCR bursts to rebuild the remaining transfers.
15. What is the recommended default value for HPROT?
Many bus masters will not be able to generate accurate protection information and for these bus masters it is recommended that the HPROT encoding shows, Non-cacheable, Non-bufferable, Privileged, Data Accesses which corresponds to HPROT[3:0] = 4’b0011.
16. Do all slaves have to support the BUSY transfer type?
Yes. All slaves must support the BUSY transfer type to ensure they are compatible with any bus master.
17. What system support is required if a slave can be powered down or have its clock stopped?
If a slave access is attempted while that slave is in a power down state or has had its clock stopped, you must ensure that an access will cause the power/clock to be restored, or else configure the AHB decoder up to redirect any such accesses to the dummy slave so that the system does not hang forever when an access to the device is made when it is disabled. Redirecting the access in this way will ensure that random “IDLE” addresses are treated with the HREADY high and HRESP=OKAY default response, but real accesses (NONSEQ or SEQ) will be detected with an ERROR response.
18. When can Early Burst Termination occur
Bursts can be early terminated either as a result of the Arbiter removing the HGRANT to a master part way through a burst, or after a slave returns a non-OKAY response to any beat of a burst. Note however that a master cannot decide to terminate a defined length burst unless prompted to do so by the Arbiter or Slave responses. All AHB Masters, Slaves and Arbiters must be designed to support Early Burst Termination.
19. Does the address have to be aligned, even for IDLE transfers?
Yes. The address should be aligned according to the transfer size (HSIZE) even for IDLE transfers. This will prevent spurious warnings from bus monitors used during simulation.
20. What is the difference between a dummy bus master and a default bus master?
The term default bus master is used to describe the master that is granted when none of the masters in the system are requesting access to the bus. Usually the bus master which is most likely to request the bus is made the default master. The dummy bus master is a master which only performs IDLE transfers. It is required in a system so the arbiter can grant a master which is guaranteed not to perform any real transfers. The two cases when
the arbiter would need to do this are when a SPLIT response is given to a locked transfer and when a SPLIT response is given and all other masters have already been SPLIT.
21. Is it legal for a master to change HADDR when a transfer is extended?
If a master is indicating that it wants to do a NONSEQ, SEQ or BUSY transfer then it cannot change the address during an extended transfer (when HREADY is low) unless it receives an ERROR, RETRY or SPLIT response. If the master is indicating that it wants to do an IDLE transfer then it may change the address.
22. Can HTRANS change whilst HREADY is low?
In general, an AHB master should not change control signals whilst HREADY is low. However it is allowable to change HTRANS in the following conditions:
* HTRANS = IDLE
The AHB master is performing internal operations and has not yet committed to a bus transfer. However during the AHB wait states (HREADY low) the master may determine that a bus transfer is required and change HTRANS on the next cycle to NONSEQ.
* HTRANS = BUSY
HTRANS is being used to give the master time to complete internal operations, which may be entirely independent of HREADY (i.e. wait states on the AHB). Therefore HTRANS can change on the next cycle to any legal value, i.e. SEQ if the burst is to continue, IDLE if the burst has completed, NONSEQ if a separate burst is to begin.
* HRESP = SPLIT/RETRY
As stated in the AHB specification, a master must assert IDLE on HTRANS during the second cycle of the two-cycle SPLIT or RETRY slave response so HTRANS will change value from the first cycle to the second
cycle of the response.
* HRESP = ERROR
The master is permitted to change HTRANS in reaction to an ERROR response in the same way as in reaction to a SPLIT/RETRY response and cancel any further beats in the current burst (even if HBURST is indicating a defined-length burst). In this case HTRANS changes to IDLE on the second cycle of the response. Alternatively, the master is permitted to continue with the current transfers.
23. What are the different bursts used for?
Typically a master would use wrapping bursts for cache line fills where the master wants to access the data it requires first and then it completes the burst to fetch the remaining data it requires for the cache line fill. Incrementing bursts are used by masters, such as DMA controllers, that are filling a buffer in memory which may not be aligned to a particular address boundary.
24. What sequences of transfers types (HTRANS) can occur on the bus?
The following examples show some of the sequences of HTRANS that can occur on the bus:
A normal burst of four transfers followed by an IDLE.
N – S – S – S – I
A normal burst of four transfers which includes BUSY transfers.
N – S – B – S – B – S – I
A burst of four transfers followed by another burst.
N – S – S – S – N – S – S – S – I
A single transfer followed by a burst of four transfers.
N – N – S – S – S – I
A single transfer followed by an IDLE
N – I
An undefined length burst which concludes with a BUSY transfer.
N – B – S – B – S – B – I
An undefined length burst which concludes with a BUSY transfer and is followed immediately by another
burst.
N – B – S – B – S – B – N – S
25. How should AHB to APB bridges handle accesses that are not 32-bits?
The bridge should simply pass the entire 32-bit data bus through the bridge. Please note that when transfers less than 32-bits are performed to an APB slave it is important to ensure that the peripheral is located on the appropriate bits of the APB data bus.