Transmit side, Overview, Ransmit – Rainbow Electronics DS31256 User Manual
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ready to be read. During a write operation, this bit is set to 1 while the write is taking place. It is set to 0 once the
write operation has completed.
Register Name:
RDMAC
Register Description: Receive DMA Channel Configuration
Register Address:
0774h
Bit
# 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
Name D7 D6 D5 D4 D3 D2 D1 D0
Default
Bit
# 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8
Name D15 D14 D13 D12 D11 D10 D9 D8
Default
Note: Bits that are underlined are read-only, all other bits are read-write.
Bits 0 to 15/Receive DMA Configuration RAM Data (D0 to D15). Data that is written to or read from the
receive DMA configuration RAM.
9.3 Transmit Side
9.3.1 Overview
The transmit DMA uses a scatter-gather technique to read packet data from main memory. The host
keeps track of and decides from where (and when) the DMA should grab the outgoing packet data. A set
of descriptors that get handed back and forth between the host and the DMA can tell the DMA where to
obtain the packet data, and the DMA can tell the host when the data has been transmitted.
The transmit DMA operation has three main areas, as shown in
, and
The host writes to the pending queue, informing the DMA which channels have packet data ready to be
transmitted. Associated with each pending-queue descriptor is a data buffer that contains the actual data
payload of the HDLC packet. The data buffers can be between 1 and 8188 Bytes in length (inclusive). If
an outgoing packet requires more memory than a data buffer contains, the host can link the data buffers
to handle packets of any size.
The done-queue descriptors contain information that the DMA wishes to pass to the host. The DMA
writes to the done queue when it has completed transmitting either a complete packet or data buffer (see
below for the discussion on the DMA update to the done queue). Through the done-queue descriptors,
the DMA informs the host about the status of the outgoing packet data. If an error occurs in the
transmission, the done queue can be used by the host to recover the packet data that did not get
transmitted and the host can then re-queue the packets for transmission.
If enabled, the DMA can burst read the pending-queue descriptors and burst write the done-queue
descriptors. This helps minimize PCI bus accesses, freeing the PCI bus up to do more time-critical
functions. See Sections
for more details on this feature.