02-06-2012, 01:27 PM
Design of a Bus Bridge between OCP to AHB
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Introduction
Aim
To design a bus bridge between Open Core Protocol (OCP) to AMBA – Advanced High-Performance Bus (AHB) protocol and verifying it functional behavior with its simulation result.
Basic Idea
Basic idea is to provide a bus bridge between the two protocols in order to perform the proper and lossless communication between the IP cores which using various protocols on the System on Chip (SOC) system. Basically, an SOC is a system which is considered as a set of components and interconnects among them. The dataflow will happen in the system in order to achieve a successful process and hence for which the various interfaces is required. If these interfaces have issues, then the process to be achieved will fail which leads to fail of whole application [1].
Generally, in an SOC system, the various protocols can be used as interfaces based on the application and also the designer [2]. The various interfaces are used because every interface has its own properties which suits for the corresponding application.
Need for Project
This project is chosen because currently the issues are increased in the industries due to the lack of proper data transferring between the IP cores on the System on Chip (SOC) system.
In recent days, the development of SOC chips and the reusable IP cores are given higher priority because of its less cost and reduction in the period of Time-to-Market. So this enables the major and very sensitive issue such as interfacing of these IP cores.
These interfaces play a vital role in SOC and should be taken care because of the communication between the IP cores property. The communication between the different IP cores should have a lossless data flow and should be flexible to the designer too.
Hence to resolve this issue, the standard protocol buses are used in or order to interface the two IP cores. Here the loss of data depends on the standards of protocols used [3]. Most of the IP cores will uses Open Core Protocol (OCP) due to its flexibility and functionalities to communicate between them. Similarly ARM uses the AMBA (Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture) which has AHB (Advanced High-Performance Bus). This bus also has its own advantages and flexibilities.
Now another important issue comes into picture is that the communication i.e. interface between these interfacing buses. The data or signal flow between the protocols cannot be done easily because each protocol will be having its own properties and advantages which are to be considered mainly. So in order to interface them, a Bus Bridge must be created which should have the properties to covert the signals of one form to another which is of acceptable by the receiving end protocol [4]. One more thing to be considered when designing the Bus Bridge is that the signal loss while converting the signal in acceptable form.
General Block Diagram
The generalized block diagram of the application targeted and where this project comes in the application is represented in Figure 1.1. Basically this project is mainly targeted for Calculator used in “Mobile Application”. In current trend, mobile has most of the applications used in the computer and hence the mobile calculator is also become one of the mostly and frequently used application in our daily life. This application contains a memory to store the pre-determined values such as sine, cosine, tan values and a processor to process the computation in order to get the calculated values. This setup with memory will makes the computation process faster and hence gives handier for the users.
Organization of Thesis
• First chapter gives a basic idea and need for this project and also a brief introduction to the generalized block diagram of the application targeted, where this project comes in that application.
• Second chapter of the thesis literature review is carried out which includes merits and demerits, basic block diagram and the data flow signal diagram of OCP and AHB. Based on the review, the specifications of the protocols have been arrived. Finally the architecture is identified for the Bus Bridge. This chapter also includes the merits and demerits of the paper referred and comparison of the OCP and AHB protocols.
Introduction
The literature survey is carried out for the protocols OCP and AMBA-AHB separately and is compared with respect to their own functionalities.
Basically, this project can be classified into three major parts.
Open Core Protocol (OCP)
Advanced High-Performance Bus (AHB) Protocol
Bus Bridge between OCP and AHB
The above classification will be discussed individually in the following sessions.
Open Core Protocol (OCP)
The Open Core Protocol (OCP) is a core centric protocol which defines a high-performance, bus-independent interface between IP cores that reduces design time, design risk, and manufacturing costs for SOC designs. Main property of OCP is that it can be configured with respect to the application required [6]. The OCP is chosen because of its advanced supporting features such as configurable sideband control signaling and test harness signals, when compared to other core protocols.
The other bus and component interfaces address only the data flow aspects of core communications, the OCP unifies all inter-core communications, including sideband control and test harness signals. The OCP’s synchronous unidirectional signaling produces simplified core implementation, integration, and timing analysis [6]. The OCP readily adapts to support new core capabilities while limiting test suite modifications for core upgrades.