hw/ip/spi_device/doc/spi

Single-bit wide SPI device interface implementing a raw data transfer protocol termed “firmware mode”
- No address bits, data is sent and received from peripheral pins to/from an internal buffer
- Intended to be used to bulk-load data into and out of the chip
- Not intended to support EEPROM or other addressing modes (functionality to come in later versions)
Supports clock polarity and reverse bit order configurations
Flexible RX/TX Buffer size within an SRAM range
Interrupts for RX/TX SRAM FIFO conditions (empty, full, designated level for RX, TX)

The SPI device module is a serial-to-parallel receive (RX) and parallel-to-serial transmit (TX) full duplex design (single line mode) to communicate with an outside host. This first version of the module supports operations controlled by firmware to dump incoming single-line RX data (MOSI) to an internal RX buffer, and send data from a transmit buffer to single-line TX output (MISO). The clock for the peripheral data transfer uses the SPI peripheral pin SCK. In this design the SCK is directly used to drive the interface logic as its primary clock, which has performance benefits, but incurs design complications described later.

The SPI device doesn't support emulating an EEPROM as of this initial version. This version is mostly compatible with the Haven SPI Slave Generic Mode design.

Data transfers with the SPI device module involve four peripheral SPI pins: SCK, CSB, MOSI, MISO. SCK is the SPI clock driven by an external SPI host. CSB (chip select bar) is an active low enable signal that frames a transfer, driven by the external host. Transfers with active SCK edges but inactive (high) CSB are ignored. Data is driven into the SPI device on the MOSI pin (“Master Out Slave In”, though we’re otherwise using host/device terminology) and driven out on MISO. Any transfer length is legal, though higher level protocols typically assume word width boundaries. See details on protocols and transfers that follow. The diagram below shows a typical transfer, here for 8 bytes (64 cycles, showing the beginning and end of the transfer). Configurability for active edges, polarities, and bit orders are described later.

{ signal: [
  { name: 'CSB',  wave: '10.........|....1.'},
  { name: 'SCK',  wave: '0.p........|....l.'},
  { name: 'MOSI', wave: 'z.=..=.=.=.=.=.=.=.=.=|=.=.=.=.z....',
    data:['R07','R06','R05','R04','R03','R02','R01','R00','R17',
          '','R73','R72','R71','R70'], period:0.5, },
  { name: 'MISO', wave: 'z.=..=.=.=.=.=.=.=.=.=|=.=.=.=.z....',
    data:['T07','T06','T05','T04','T03','T02','T01','T00','T17',
          '','T73','T72','T71','T70'], period:0.5}],
  head:{
    text: 'Data Transfer',
    tick: ['-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 60 61 62 63     ']
  }
}

Firmware mode, as implemented by this SPI device, is used to bulk copy data in and out of the chip using the pins as shown above. In general, it is used to load firmware into the chip, but can be used for any data transfer into or out of the chip. The transfers are “generic” in the sense that there is no addressing involved. Data transferred into the chip goes into a SPI Device circular buffer implemented in an SRAM, and firmware decides what to do with the data. Data transferred out of the chip comes out of a circular buffer in an SRAM. Software can build any number of higher level protocols on top of this basic mechanism. All transfers are by definition full duplex: whenever an active SCK edge is received, a bit of RX data is latched into the peripheral, and a bit of TX data is sent out of the peripheral. If transfers only require unidirectional movement of data, the other direction can be ignored but will still be active. For instance, if only receive data is needed in the transfer, the device will still be transmitting data out on the TX (“MISO”) pin.

SPI Flash Mode

The primary protocol considered is one used by an external SPI host to send chunks of firmware data into the device in the receive direction, confirming the contents with an echo back of a hash of the received data in the transmit direction. This is generally termed ‘SPI Flash’ mode, since SPI is used to send firmware into the device flash, brokered by software confirming integrity of the received firmware data. This special case will be described first, and then a generic understanding of how firmware mode operates will follow.

The following diagram shows the expected data transfer in SPI Flash mode.

data transfer in SPI Device

In this diagram, bursts of data transfer are shown as “pages” of firmware content being driven into the device. The size of the page is not relevant, though it must be less than the size of the internal SPI Device SRAM. (Typically the SRAM is divided in half for RX and TX buffers, but the boundary is configurable. The total size of RX and TX buffer must fit in the SPI device SRAM.) Since the external SPI Host is in charge of the clock (SCK), it controls all aspects of the transfer, including the size of the page. But it is done in coordination with software running on the device that manages the higher level protocol.

The protocol assumes that for each page written into the device, a response will be prepared for the next page. But since the SPI Device is always transmitting during every received page, the first transmitted page can be ignored. After the first page is received, software will get alerted as to its completion (via an RX interrupt), and will execute whatever integrity check is required on that data. It can then prepare its response to page zero by writing into the SPI Device TX buffer. What it writes into the TX buffer is of the concern of the higher level protocol. It could be a “good” indication, a full echo of the RX data, or a hash of the received contents. The decision is not in scope for this specification.

Clearly there is a potential race condition here as a new page could begin to be received before software has prepared the transmit response to page zero (including the time to read data out of the SRAM), but that is a condition that the higher level protocol must prepare for. That protocol is not in scope for this document, but some hints to its implementation are given in the programmer’s guide that follows.

The transfer continues until all received data is taken in, and responded back. In this protocol the last “received” page of data is a “don’t care” as long as the response is transmitted successfully.

Generic Firmware Mode

Taking this example as a guide, we can see the generic method of the SPI firmware mode. On every active SCK clock edge, data is received from the MOSI pin into the SPI device, and data is transmitted on the MISO pin.. Received data is gathered into bytes and written into the RX circular buffer in the SPI Device SRAM as it is accumulated. Whatever data exists in the TX circular buffer is serialized and transmitted. Transfers are framed using the active low chip select pin SCB. What happens when receive data arrives and the RX circular buffer is full, or when transmits encounter an empty TX circular buffer are error conditions discussed in the Design Details section that follows.

Block Diagram

The block diagram above shows how the SPI Device IP converts incoming bit-serialized MOSI data into a valid byte, where the data bit is valid when the chip select signal (CSB) is 0 (active low) and SCK is at positive or negative edge (configurable, henceforth called the “active edge”). The bit order within the byte is determined by !!CFG.rx_order configuration register field. After a byte is gathered, the interface module writes the byte data into a small FIFO (“RXFIFO”) using SCK. It is read out of the FIFO and written into to the buffer SRAM (“DP_SRAM”) using the system bus clock. If RXFIFO is full, this is an error condition and the interface module discards the byte.

The interface module also serializes data from the small transmit FIFO (“TXFIFO”) and shifts it out on the MISO pin when CSB is 0 and SCK is at the active edge. The bit order within the byte can be configured with configuration register field !!CFG.tx_order. It is expected that software has prepared TX data as per the SPI Flash or general Firmware Mode described in the “Defining Firmware Mode” section above. But because SCK is not under the control of software or the device (it is driven by the external SPI host), it is possible that there is no data ready in the TXFIFO when chip select becomes active and the interface needs to send data on the MISO pin. Either software has not prepared TX data or software does not care about the contents of the TX data - then the hardware will send whatever lingering data is in the empty TXFIFO. If this is a security risk, then software should at least soft-reset the contents of the TXFIFO using the !!CONTROL.rst_txfifo register. The soft-reset signal doesn't have synchronizer to SCK clock, so the software shall control the reset signal when SPI interface is in idle state.

RXFIFO, TXFIFO, and DP_SRAM

The relationship between the Dual Port SRAM (DP_SRAM) and the RX and TXFIFOs should be explained. The SRAM is divided into a section for the transmit direction, named TXF, and a section for the receive direction, named RXF. Each section has its own read and write pointer. The SRAM may be read and written by software at any time, but for correct normal operation it will only write the empty area of the TXF (between the write pointer and read pointer) and only read the full area of the RXF (between the read pointer and write pointer) with the other areas used by the hardware It is first worth noting that the hardware implications of the asynchronous nature of SCK and the fact it may not be free running, complicate some of the logic. The full feature set of that interface logic (clocked by SCK) includes the serial to parallel converter for RX data, the parallel-to-serial converter for TX data, and the interfaces to RXFIFO and TXFIFO. Before the first bit transfer and after the last SCK is stopped, so there is no clock for any of this logic. So for instance there is no guarantee of the two-clock-edges normally required for asynchronous handshaking protocols. The RXFIFO and TXFIFO exist to facilitate this situation.

In the receive direction, data gathered from the MOSI pin is written into the RXFIFO (see details below) at appropriate size boundaries. This data is handshake-received on the core clock side, gathered into byte or word quantity, and written into the RX circular buffer of the dual-port SRAM. On each write, the RXF write pointer(!!RXF_PTR.wptr) is incremented by hardware, wrapping at the size of the circular buffer. Software can watch (via polling or interrupts) the incrementing of this write pointer to determine how much valid data has been received, and determine when and what data to act upon. Once it has acted upon data, the software should update the RXF read pointer to indicate the space in the SRAM is available for future writes by the hardware. If incrementing the write pointer would result in it becoming equal to the read pointer then the RXF is full and any subsequently received data will be discarded. Thus in normal operation the RXF write pointer is updated automatically by hardware and the RXF read pointer is managed by software. As an optimization the hardware will normally only write to the 32-bit wide SRAM when an entire word can be written. Since the end of the received data may not be aligned, there is a timer that forces sub-word writes if data has been staged for too long. The timer value (!!CFG.timer_v) represents the number of core clock cycles. For instance, if timer value is configured in 0xFF, the RXF control logic will write gathered sub-word data in 255 cycles if no further bit stream from SPI is received.

In the transmit direction, things are a little more tricky. Since the pin interface logic begins transmitting data on its very first SCK edge, there are no previous clock edges in the interface side of the fifo to allow an empty flag to be updated. So the interface must blindly take whatever data is at the read pointer of the TXFIFO. (In a typical asynchronous FIFO with free-running clocks the pointers can always be sent across the asynchronous boundary to determine if the FIFO is truly empty or not). Hence the need to potentially send out garbage data if software has not prepared the TXFIFO in time.

The software writes data that it wants to transmit into the TXF circular buffer of the DP_SRAM buffer. It then passes the data to the hardware by moving the TXF write pointer to point to the next location after the data (this is the location it will use to start the data for the next transmission). Hardware that manages the TXFIFO detects the change in TXF write pointer and begins reading from the SRAM and prefilling the TXFIFO until it is full or until all valid TXF data has been read. This prepares the TXFIFO with the desired data for when the next SCK data arrives. As the SCK domain logic pulls data out of the TXFIFO to transmit on the MISO pin, that TXFIFO read is detected (after synchronization to the core clock domain) and potentially another word of data is read from the SRAM and written into the TXFIFO. Each time the SRAM is read the hardware increments the TXF read pointer making the space available to software. Like above, though conversely, in normal operation the TXF write pointer is managed completely by software and the TXF read pointer is incremented by hardware.

All reads and writes to/from the SRAM for RXF and TXF activity are managed by direct reads and writes through the TLUL bus interface, managed by the auto-generated register file control logic.

The SPI device module has two programmable register bits to control the SPI clock, !!CFG.CPOL and !!CFG.CPHA. CPOL controls clock polarity and CPHA controls the clock phase. Please take a look at the link below from Wikipedia. File:SPI_timing_diagram2.svg

As described in the Theory of Operations above, in firmware mode, the SPI device writes incoming data directly into the SRAM (through RXFIFO) and updates the SPI device SRAM write pointer (!!RXF_PTR.wptr). It does not parse a command byte nor address bytes, analyzing incoming data relies on firmware implementation of a higher level protocol. Data is sent from the TXF SRAM contents via TXFIFO.

It is important that the data path inside the block should meet the timing that is a half cycle of SCK. As SCK clock is shut off right after the last bit of the last byte is received, the hardware module cannot latch MOSI signal. The signal is directly connected to RXFIFO and other bits [7:1] are shifted out values of MOSI. This is detailed in the waveform below.

{ signal: [
  { name: 'CSB', wave: '10.||...|..1'},
  { name: 'SCK', wave: '0.p||...|..l', node:'......b' },
  { name: 'MOSI', wave: '0.=..=|=|=.=.=.=|=.=.z..', data:['7','6','5','1','0','7','6','1','0'], period:0.5, },
  { name: 'BitCount', wave: '=...=.=|=|=.=.=.=|=.=...', data:['7','6','5','1','0','7','6','1','0','7'], period:0.5},
  { name: 'RX_WEN', wave: '0....|....1.0.|...1.0...' , period:0.5},
  { name: 'RXFIFO_D', wave:'x.=.=================.x.', node: '...........a',period:0.5},
  ],
  head:{
    text: 'Read Data to FIFO',
    tick: ['-2 -1 0 1 . 30 31 32 33 n-1 n n+1 n+2 '],
  },
}

As shown above, the RXFIFO write request signal (RX_WEN) is asserted when BitCount reaches 0h. Bitcount is reset by CSB asynchronously, returning to 7h for the next round. RXFIFO input data changes on the half clock cycle. RXFIFO latches WEN at the positive edge of SCK. So Bit 0 (or Bit 7 in reverse order case, see !!CFG.rx_order configuration field) cannot be latched. When BitCount is 0h, bit 0 of FIFO data shows bit1 value for the first half clock cycle then shows correct value after MOSI value is changed.

TXFIFO is the same. TX_REN is asserted when Tx BitCount reaches 0, and the current entry of TXFIFO is popped at the negative edge of SCK. It results in a change of MISO value at the negative edge of SCK. MISO_OE is bounded by CSB signal. If CSB goes to high, MISO is returned to High-Z state.

{ signal: [
  { name: 'CSB', wave: '10.||...|..1'},
  { name: 'SCK', wave: '0...p.|.|...|l' , node:'.............a', period:0.5},
  { name: 'MISO', wave: 'x.=..=|=|=.=.=.=|=.=.x..', data:['7','6','5','1','0','7','6','1','0'], period:0.5, },
  { name: 'MISO_OE', wave:'0.1...................0.', period:0.5},
  { name: 'BitCount', wave: '=....=.=|=|=.=.=.=|=.=..', data:['7','6','5','1','0','7','6','1','0','7'], period:0.5},
  { name: 'TX_REN', wave: '0.....|....1.0.|...1.0..' , node:'............c',period:0.5},
  { name: 'TX_DATA_i', wave: '=............=.......=..',data:['D0','Dn','Dn+1'], node:'.............b', period:0.5},
  ],
  edge: ['a~b', 'c~b t1'],
  head:{
    text: 'Write Data from FIFO',
    tick: ['-2 -1 0 1 . 30 31 32 33 n-1 n n+1 n+2 '],
  },
}

RXFIFO control

RXF CTRL State Machine

The RXFIFO Control module controls data flow from RXFIFO to SRAM. It connects two FIFOs having different data widths. RXFIFO is a byte width. SRAM storing incoming data to serve FW has TL-UL interface width.

To reduce traffic to SRAM, the control logic gathers FIFO entries up to full SRAM data width, then does a full-word SRAM write. A programmable timer exists in the case when partial bytes are received at the end of a transfer. If the timer expires while bytes are still in the RXFIFO, the logic writes partial words to SRAM. Following received data triggers read-modify-write operation to update partially.

State Machine

TXFIFO control

The TXFIFO control module reads data from SRAM then pushes to TXFIFO whenever there is space in TXFIFO and when the TXF wptr and rptr indicate there is data to transmit. Data is written into the TXF SRAM by software which also controls the TXF write pointer.

TXF CTRL Data Path

The TXFIFO control module latches the write pointer then use it internally. This scheme prevents HW from using incorrect data from sram_rdata if write pointer and read pointer are pointing at the same location in the SRAM. It is recommended for the software to update the write pointer at the SRAM data width granularity if it has more than 1 DWord data to send out. If software updates write pointer every byte, HW tries to fetch data from SRAM every time it hits the write pointer leading to inefficiency of SRAM access.

If TXFIFO is empty, HW module repeatedly sends current entry of TXFIFO output as explained in “Theory of Operations” section. It cannot use an empty signal from TXFIFO due to asynchronous timing constraints.

So, if software wants to send specific dummy data, it should prepare the amount of data with that value. As shown in the Theory Of Operations figure, for example, internal software could prepare FFh values for first page.

State Machine

SPI Device IP uses 2kB internal Dual-Port SRAM. Firmware can resize RX/ TX circular buffer within the SRAM size. For example, the firmware is able to set RX circular buffer to be 1.5kB and 512B for TX circular buffer.

If it is need to increase SRAM size, SramAw local parameter in spi_device.sv should be changed. It cannot exceed 13 (32kB) due to the read and write pointers' widths.

By default, RX SRAM FIFO base and limit address (via !!RXF_ADDR register) are set to 0x0 and 0x1FC, 512 bytes. And TX SRAM FIFO base and limit addresses (in the !!TXF_ADDR register) are 0x200 and 0x3FC. If FW wants bigger spaces, it can change the values of the above registers !!RXF_ADDR and !!TXF_ADDR.

Software can configure the timer value !!CFG.timer_v to change the delay between DATA received from SPI interface to be written into the SRAM. Value of the field is the number of the core clock cycles that the logic waits for. Note that if receiver gathers full SRAM words, 4 bytes, it writes to RX SRAM FIFO regardless of the timer.

RX/ TX SRAM FIFO has read and write pointers, !!RXF_PTR and !!TXF_PTR . Those pointers are used to manage circular FIFOs inside the SRAM. The pointer width in the register description is 16 bit but the number of valid bits in the pointers depends on the size of the SRAM.

The current SRAM size is 2kB and the pointer width is 12 bits, 11bits representing a byte offset and 1 most-significant bit for indicating phase of the FIFO. Since they represent bytes, the low 2 bits indicate the offset within the 32-bit wide SRAM word. The pointers indicate the offset into the area described by the base and limit values, so the lower bits (11 bits in this case) of a pointer shall not exceed the size in bytes (4 * (limit address - base address)) reserved for the region (RXF or TXF) that the pointer is in. For instance, if FW sets RXFIFO depth to 128 (default value), it shall not update the read pointer outside the range 0x000 - 0x1FF (128*4 = 512Bytes) ignoring the phase bit, bit 11.