Intel® Quartus® Prime Software
Intel® Quartus® Prime Design Software, Design Entry, Synthesis, Simulation, Verification, Timing Analysis, System Design (Platform Designer, formerly Qsys)
16679 Discussions

Qsys-Problem with read latency of registered inputs in tri-state bridge

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
1,025 Views

Hi 

 

I switched from SOPC builer to Qsys (Quartus 11.0sp1) today.  

 

On my custom board I have a CFI flash device (S29GL128P10FF010) connected to my SOPC system through a tristate bridge. A DSP device (ADSP-21371) is connected to the flash through a custom designed tri-state bridge master.  

 

At startup, the DSP boots from the flash with a pre-defined access time of 250ns (slowest possible). My FPGA (Cyclone III) is running at 30MHz and uses 6 clock cycles (50ns read wait, 85ns setup, 25ns hold + 1clock cycle = 200ns) to fetch the data from the flash device.  

 

This was only possible by setting the incomming signals to not registered in the SOPC tri-state bridge. As far as I understand, all signals are now registered with Qsys new tri-state bridge concept and there is no way to change this.  

 

However, there have been three new parameters integrated in the signal timings of the generic tri-state controller. The automatic converter set them to: 

 

- Maximum pending read transactions = 3 

- Turnaround time = 2 

- Read latency = 2 

 

I don't know what these parameters exactly do, but now it takes 10 clock cycles (333ns) to receive data from the flash which is too slow for the DSP! :( 

 

=> Why are there 4 additional clock cycles (I would expect 2)? 

=> Is there a way to unregister the input signals - or to use the old SOPC tri-state bridge controller with Qsys? 

=> Will changing the timing parameters help anything? 

=> Is there a detailed description with timing diagrams on these new parameters available somewhere? 

 

I'll be glad for any suggestions.  

 

Best Regards 

Simon
0 Kudos
1 Reply
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
284 Views

Hi Simon! 

I have the same problem! How do you solve it? 

Best Regards
0 Kudos
Reply