AM79C971VCW Advanced Micro Devices, AM79C971VCW Datasheet - Page 54

• Manufacturer Part Number: AM79C971VCW
• Description: PCnet-FAST Single-Chip Full-Duplex 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Controller for PCI Local Bus
• Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices

Note that this form of restart will not perform the same
in the Am79C971 controller as in the C-LANCE device.
In particular, upon restart, the Am79C971 controller re-
loads the transmit and receive descriptor pointers with
their respective base addresses. This means that the
software must clear the descriptor OWN bits and reset
its descriptor ring pointers before restar ting the
Am79C971 controller. The reload of descriptor base
addresses is performed in the C-LANCE device only
after initialization, so that a restart of the C-LANCE
without initialization leaves the C-LANCE pointing at
the same descriptor locations as before the restart.
Suspend
The Am79C971 controller offers two suspend modes
that allows easy updating of the CSR registers without
going through a full re-initialization of the device. The
suspend modes also allow stopping the device with or-
derly termination of all network activity.
The host requests the Am79C971 controller to enter
the suspend mode by setting SPND (CSR5, bit 0) to 1.
The host must poll SPND until it reads back 1 to deter-
mine that the Am79C971 controller has entered the
suspend mode. When the host sets SPND to 1, the pro-
cedure taken by the Am79C971 controller to enter the
suspend mode depends on the setting of the fast sus-
pend enable bit (FASTSPND, CSR7, bit 15).
When a fast suspend is requested (FASTSPND is set
to 1), the Am79C971 controller performs a quick entry
into the suspend mode. At the time the SPND bit is set,
the Am79C971 controller will continue the DMA pro-
cess of any transmit and/or receive packets that have
already begun DMA activity until the network activity
has been completed. In addition, any transmit packet
that had started transmission will be fully transmitted
and any receive packet that had begun reception will be
fully received. However, no additional packets will be
transmitted or received and no additional transmit or re-
ceive DMA activity will begin after network activity has
ceased. Hence, the Am79C971 controller may enter
the suspend mode with transmit and/or receive packets
still in the FIFOs or external SRAM. This offers a worst
case suspend time of a maximum length packet over
the possibility of completely emptying the external
SRAM. Care must be exercised in this mode, because
the entire memory subsystem of the Am79C971 con-
troller is suspended. Any changes to either the descrip-
tor r ings or the exter nal SRAM can cause the
Am79C971 controller to start up in an unknown condi-
tion and could cause data corruption.
When FASTSPNDE is 0 and the SPND bit is set, the
Am79C971 controller may take longer before entering
the suspend mode. At the time the SPND bit is set, the
Am79C971 controller will complete the DMA process of
a transmit packet if it had already begun and the
Am79C971 controller will completely receive a receive
54
Am79C971
packet if it had already begun. The Am79C971 control-
ler will not receive any new packets after the comple-
tion of the current reception. Additionally, all transmit
packets stored in the transmit FIFOs and the transmit
buffer area in the external SRAM (if one is present) will
be transmitted, and all receive packets stored in the re-
ceive FIFOs and the receive buffer area in the external
SRAM (if one is present) will be transferred into system
memory. Since the FIFO and external SRAM contents
are flushed, it may take much longer before the
Am79C971 controller enters the suspend mode. The
amount of time that it takes depends on many factors
including the size of the external SRAM, bus latency,
and network traffic level.
Upon completion of the described operations, the
Am79C971 controller sets the read-version of SPND to
1 and enters the suspend mode. In suspend mode, all
of the CSR and BCR registers are accessible. As long
as the Am79C971 controller is not reset while in sus-
pend mode (by H_RESET, S_RESET, or by setting the
STOP bit), no re-initialization of the device is required
after the device comes out of suspend mode. When
SPND is set to 0, the Am79C971 controller will leave
the suspend mode and will continue at the transmit and
receive descriptor ring locations, where it had been
when it entered the suspend mode.
See the section on Magic Packet™ technology for de-
tails on how that affects suspension of the Am79C971
controller.
Buffer Management
Buffer management is accomplished through message
descriptor entries organized as ring structures in mem-
ory. There are two descriptor rings, one for transmit and
one for receive. Each descriptor describes a single
buffer. A frame may occupy one or more buffers. If mul-
tiple buffers are used, this is referred to as buffer chain-
ing.
Descriptor Rings
Each descriptor ring must occupy a contiguous area of
memory. During initialization, the user-defined base
address for the transmit and receive descriptor rings,
as well as the number of entries contained in the de-
scriptor rings are set up. The programming of the soft-
ware style (SWSTYLE, BCR20, bits 7-0) affects the
way the descriptor rings and their entries are arranged.
When SWSTYLE is at its default value of 0, the de-
scriptor rings are backwards compatible with the
Am79C90 C-LANCE and the Am79C96x PCnet-ISA
family. The descriptor ring base addresses must be
aligned to an 8-byte boundary and a maximum of 128
ring entries is allowed when the ring length is set
through the TLEN and RLEN fields of the initialization
block. Each ring entry contains a subset of the three
32-bit transmit or receive message descriptors (TMD,
RMD) that are organized as four 16-bit structures