IMX51-Spartan6 interface description

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Introduction

This article describe the bus interface configuration to communicate between i.MX51 processor and Spartan6 FPGA. In i.MX51, the bus used to make communication with the FPGA is named WEIM for Wireless Extension Interface Module. All description of this bus can be found under the i.MX51 reference manual in chapter 63 (page 3113).

Simplified view

figure 1 - i.MX51-Spartan6 bus description

Figure 1 is a simplified view of APF51 schematics (page 15), signals are :

• BCLK: i.MX51 bulk clock used to clock the spartan6.
• DA[15:0] : Data/Address multiplexed bus.
• LBA : Noted ADV for ADdress Valid under the i.MX51 reference manual.
• EB0, EB1 : For Enable Byte, write signal for lower byte and upper byte on data bus.
• CS1 : Chip Select 1.
• CS2 : Chip Select 2.
• OE : For Output Enable bit, read signal. (Motorola way of bus)
• RW : Read/Write signal. (Intel way of bus)
• DTACK : Data acknoledge, for asynchronous access.
• WAIT : Wait signal used for some burst access.

Not part of WEIM bus :

• CLK0 : An i.MX51 output clock (not used ).
• FPGA_INITB : used by default for interrupts (GPIO4_11).

Signals in bold are signals used in default configuration.

Default configuration

Clock

The clock used to clock the fpga is BCLK and is configured to 92.85 MHz.

Chip Select

By default the chip select 1 (CS1) is used for communication. The address domain corresponding to this chip select can be found in i.MX51 reference manual in chapter 2 (Memory Map page 65).

Start Address	End Address	Size	Region
B800_0000	BFFF_FFFF	128M	CS1 (Flash) 128M
C000_0000	C7FF_FFFF	128M	CS2 (Flash) 128M

It's possible to use the second chip select (CS2) to extend memory domain or to use different timing configuration with the same Address/Data bus signals. The default bus configuration for the APF51 can be found in the file apf51.h in u-boot sources : buildroot/output/build/u-boot-2010.03/include/configs/apf51.h

Especially these lines :

#define	CONFIG_FPGA_GCR1_VALUE	0x019100bf
#define	CONFIG_FPGA_GCR2_VALUE	0x00000000
                                           
#define	CONFIG_FPGA_RCR1_VALUE	0x04000010
#define	CONFIG_FPGA_RCR2_VALUE	0x00000000
                                           
#define	CONFIG_FPGA_WCR1_VALUE	0x04000008
#define	CONFIG_FPGA_WCR2_VALUE	0x00000000

It is not necessary to modify apf51.h file and recompile U-Boot for WEIM timings test, register can be read/written via U-Boot or Linux. To access these register with U-Boot or Linux, use the address given under the reference manual in WEIM register descriptions (63.4.3 Register Descriptions).

Note: The 0xBASE value is given in chapter 2 "Memory Map" (page 65) : 0xBASE -> 0x83FD8000

Timings

Following chronograms represents WEIM read and write configured for APF51.

figure 2 - WEIM Write timings

figure 3 - WEIM Read timings

FPGA side

By default, the wishbone bus is used under the spartan6 fpga. Then a WEIM to Wishbone wrapper is used, this wrapper is available under POD default libraries in wrappers lib. The component is named imx51_wb16_wrapper.