SocLib Components General Index
VciMultiNic
1) Functional Description
The VciMultiNic component, is a multi-channels, GMII compliant, network controller for Gigabit Ethernet network.
It can support a throughput of 1 Gigabit/s, as long as the system clock frequency is larger or equal to the GMII clock frequency (ie 125 MHz).
Each channel defines a different destination MAC address, and each channel uses private RX and TX buffers. The number of channels is a constructor parameter, and cannot be larger than 8.
On the VCI side, this component makes the assumption that the VCI RDATA & WDATA fields have 32 bits.
Regarding the GMII physical interface, this simulation model supports three modes of operation, defined by a constructor parameter:
- NIC_MODE_FILE: Both the RX packets stream an the TX packets stream are read/written from/to dedicated files "nic_rx_file.txt" and "nic_tx_dile.txt", stored in the same directory as the top.cpp file.
- NIC_MODE_SYNTHESIS: The TX packet stream is still written to the "nic_tx_file.txt" file, but the RX packet stream is synthesised. The packet length (between 64 and 1538 bytes) and the source MAC address (8 possible values) are pseudo-random numbers.
- NIC_MODE_TAP: The TX and RX packet streams are send and received to and from the physical network controller of the workstation running the simulation.
It is a VCI target with no DMA capability : All data transfers must be performed by software, or by the external VciChbufDma component.
The data transfer unit between software and the NIC is a fixed-size container, containing an integer number of packets. A container is a 4 Kbytes buffer (1024 words of 32 bits).
The first 34 words define the fixed-format container header :
| word0 | NB_WORDS | NB_PACKETS |
| word1 | PLEN[0] | PLEN[1] |
| ... | ... | ... |
| word33 | PLEN[64] | PLEN[65] |
- NB_PACKETS is the actual number of packets in the container.
- NB_WORDS is the number of useful words in the container.
- PLEN[i] is the number of bytes for packet[i].
The packets are stored in the (1024 - 34) following words, The max number of packets in a container is 66 packets, and the packets are word-aligned.
Each channel contains two RX containers and two TX containers. The two RX containers are organized as a RX_CHBUF, and the two TX containers are organized as a TX_CHBUF.
A CHBUF is a set of M chained buffers, M status variables, plus a CHBUF_descriptor. A CHBUF_descriptor is an array of M buffer_descriptors. The status LSB is a boolean which is true when the buffer is full and false when it is empty. A buffer_descriptor contains the buffer base address and the buffer status base address PADDR (in the physical address space). Both the addresses are 64 bytes aligned and they have the same address extension (bits[43:32]).
In order to simplify the L2/L3 cache coherence, each status variable is implemented as a 64 bytes record, even if only the last bit contain useful information. A buffer_descriptor occupies 64 bits: the 12 MSB bits contain the common extension of the buffer address and the buffer status address, the 26 following bits contain the bits[31:6] of the buffer address and the 26 LSB bits contain the bits[31:6] of the buffer status address.
This CHBUF organization allows the TX or RX buffers to be accessed by the VciChbufDma engine.
2) Addressable registers and buffers
In a virtualized environment each channel segment will be mapped in the address space of a different virtual machine. Each channel takes a segment of 32 Kbytes in the address space, to simplify the address decoding, but only 20K bytes are used.
- The first 4 Kbytes contain the RX_0 container data
- The next 4 Kbytes contain the RX_1 container data
- The next 4 Kbytes contain the TX_0 container data
- The next 4 Kbytes contain the TX_1 container data
- The next 4 Kbytes contain the channel addressable registers:
| NIC_RX_STS_0 | RX_0 status (full or empty) | read/write |
| NIC_RX_STS_1 | RX_1 status (full or empty) | read/write |
| NIC_TX_STS_0 | TX_0 status (full or empty) | read/write |
| NIC_TX_STS_1 | TX_1 status (full or empty) | read/write |
| NIC_RX_DESC_LO_0 | RX_0 descriptor low word | read/write |
| NIC_RX_DESC_HI_0 | RX_0 descriptor high word | read/write |
| NIC_RX_DESC_LO_1 | RX_1 descriptor low word | read/write |
| NIC_RX_DESC_HI_1 | RX_1 descriptor high word | read/write |
| NIC_TX_DESC_LO_0 | TX_0 descriptor low word | read/write |
| NIC_TX_DESC_HI_0 | TX_0 descriptor high word | read/write |
| NIC_TX_DESC_LO_1 | TX_1 descriptor low word | read/write |
| NIC_TX_DESC_HI_1 | TX_1 descriptor high word | read/write |
| NIC_MAC_4 | MAC address 32 LSB bits | read_only |
| NIC_MAC_2 | MAC address 16 MSB bits | read_only |
| NIC_RX_RUN | RX channel activated | write_only |
| NIC_TX_RUN | TX channel activated | write_only |
On top of the channels segments is the hypervisor segment, taking 4 Kbytes, and containing the global configuration registers: (all read/write). In a virtualized environment, the corresponding page should not be mapped in the virtual machines address spaces, as it should not accessed by the virtual machines.
| Register name | function | Reset value |
| NIC_G_VIS | bitfield / bit N = 0 -> channel N is disabled | all inactive |
| NIC_G_ON | NIC active if non zero (inactive at reset) | inactive |
| NIC_G_BC_ENABLE | boolean / broadcast enabled if true | disabled |
| NIC_G_TDM_ENABLE | boolean / enable TDM dor TX if true | disabled |
| NIC_G_TDM_PERIOD | value of TDM time slot | |
| NIC_G_PYPASS_ENABLE | boolean / enable bypass for TX if true | enabled |
| NIC_G_MAC_4[8] | default MAC address 32 LSB bits for channel[i] | |
| NIC_G_MAC_2[8] | default MAC address 16 LSB bits for channel[i] |
The Hypervisor segment contains also various event counters for statistics (read/write)
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_G2S_RECEIVED | number of packets received on GMII RX port |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_G2S_DISCARDED | number of RX packets discarded by RX_G2S FSM |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DES_SUCCESS | number of RX packets transmited by RX_DES FSM |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DES_TOO_SMALL | number of discarded too small RX packets |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DES_TOO_BIG | number of discarded too big RX packets |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DES_MFIFO_FULL | number of discarded RX packets for fifo full |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DES_CRC_FAIL | number of discarded RX packets for checksum |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DISPATCH_RECEIVED | number of packets received by RX_DISPATCH FSM |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DISPATCH_BROADCAST | number of broadcast RX packets received |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DISPATCH_DST_FAIL | number of discarded RX packets for DST MAC |
| NIC_G_NPKT_RX_DISPATCH_CH_FULL | number of discarded RX packets for channel full |
| NIC_G_NPKT_TX_DISPATCH_RECEIVED | number of packets received by TX_DISPATCH FSM |
| NIC_G_NPKT_TX_DISPATCH_TOO_SMALL | number of discarded too small TX packets |
| NIC_G_NPKT_TX_DISPATCH_TOO_BIG | number of discarded too big TX packets |
| NIC_G_NPKT_TX_DISPATCH_SRC_FAIL | number of discarded TX packets because SRC MAC |
| NIC_G_NPKT_TX_DISPATCH_BROADCAST | number of broadcast TX packets received |
| NIC_G_NPKT_TX_DISPATCH_BYPASS | number of bypassed TX->RX packets |
| NIC_G_NPKT_TX_DISPATCH_TRANSMIT | number of transmit TX packets |
For extensibility issues, you should access all these registers using the globally-defined offsets in file
source:trunk/soclib/soclib/module/connectivity_component/vci_multi_nic/include/soclib/multi_nic.h
This hardware component checks for segmentation violation, and can be used as a default target.
3) Component definition & usage
source:trunk/soclib/soclib/module/connectivity_component/vci_multi_nic/caba/metadata/vci_multi_nic.sd
Uses( 'vci_multi_nic' )
4) CABA Implementation
CABA sources
- interface : source:trunk/soclib/soclib/module/connectivity_component/vci_multi_nic/caba/source/include/vci_multi_nic.h
- implementation : source:trunk/soclib/soclib/module/connectivity_component/vci_multi_nic/caba/source/src/vci_multi_nic.cpp
CABA Constructor parameters
VciMultiNic(
sc_module_name name, // Component Name
const soclib::common::IntTab &tgtid, // Target index
const soclib::common::MappingTable &mt, // MappingTable
const size_t channels, // Number of channels
const uint32_t mac4, // MAC address 32 LSB bits
const uint32_t mac2, // MAC address 16 MSB bits
const int mode, // GMII physical interface modeling
const uint32_t inter_frame_gap); // delay between two packets
CABA Ports
- p_resetn : Global system reset
- p_clk : Global system clock
- p_vci : The VCI target port
- p_rx_irq[k] : As many RX IRQ ports as the number of channels
- p_tx_irq[k] : As many TX IRQ ports as the number of channels
4) TLM-DT implementation
The TLM-DT implementation is not available yet.
