Sun Microelectronics
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7. UltraSPARC External Interfaces
7.3.2.3 Coherent Write Misses
If a coherent write misses in the E-Cache, the corresponding cache line is victim-
ized. When the victimized line is dirty, a writeback transaction is scheduled. In
any case, a read-to-own transaction is scheduled for the required write address.
When the read completes, the new data overwrites it in the cache. Section 7.11.1,
“Clean Victim Handling” and Section 7.11.2, “Dirty Victim Handling,” discuss
this process in more detail.
7.3.2.4 Coherent Read Followed by Coherent Write
When a read is made to the E-Cache, the three cycle latency (1–1–1 Mode) causes
the data bus to be busy two cycles after the address appears at the pins. For a
processor without delayed writes, writes must be held for two cycles in order to
avoid collisions between the write data and the data coming back from the read.
Also, electrical considerations force an extra dead cycle while the E-Cache data
bus driver is switched from the SRAMs to the UltraSPARC. UltraSPARC uses a
one-deep write buffer in the data SRAMs to reduce the read-to-write turn-around
penalty to two cycles. The write data is sent one cycle after the address
(Figure 7-9). There is no penalty for write-to-read transitions.
Figure 7-9 shows the two cycle read-to-write turnaround penalty for 1–1–1 Mode.
The figure shows three reads followed by two writes and two tag updates. The
two cycle penalty applies to both tag accesses and data accesses (two stalled cy-
cles between A2_tag and A3_tag as well as between A2_data and A3_data). There
is no read-to-write turnaround penalty for 2–2 Mode.
Figure 7-9 Read-to-Write Bus Turnaround Penalty (1–1–1 Mode Only)
CLK
CYCLE
012345678
TSYN_WR_L
W3 W4
TOE_L
R0 R1 R2 W3 W4
ECAT
A0_tag A1_tag A2_tag A3_tag A4_tag
TDATA
D0_tag D1_tag D2_tag D3_tag D4_tag
DSYN_WR_L
W3 W4
DOE_L
R0 R1 R2 W3 W4
ECAD
A0_data A1_data A2_data A3_data A4_data
EDATA D0_data D1_data D2_data D3_data D4_data
Staalls
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