Glossary
ARM DDI 0363E Copyright © 2009 ARM Limited. All rights reserved. Glossary-3
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• the master and slave interface conventions for AXI components.
AXI terminology The following AXI terms are general. They apply to both masters and slaves:
Active read transaction
A transaction for which the read address has transferred, but the last read data has
not yet transferred.
Active transfer
A transfer for which the xVALID
1
handshake has asserted, but for which
xREADY has not yet asserted.
Active write transaction
A transaction for which the write address and/or leading write data has
transferred, but the write response has not yet transferred.
Completed transfer
A transfer for which the xVALID/xREADY handshake is complete.
Payload The non-handshake signals in a transfer.
Transaction An entire burst of transfers, comprising an address, one or more data transfers and
a response transfer (writes only).
Transmit An initiator driving the payload and asserting the relevant xVALID signal.
Transfer A single exchange of information. That is, with one xVALID/xREADY
handshake.
The following AXI terms are master interface attributes. To obtain optimum performance, they
must be specified for all components with an AXI master interface:
Combined issuing capability
The maximum number of active transactions that a master interface can generate.
This is specified instead of write or read issuing capability for master interfaces
that use a combined storage for active write and read transactions.
Read ID capability
The maximum number of different ARID values that a master interface can
generate for all active read transactions at any one time.
AXI
interconnect
Write address channel (AW)
Write data channel (W)
Write response channel (B)
Read address channel (AR)
Read data channel (R)
Write address channel (AW)
Write data channel (W)
Write response channel (B)
Read address channel (AR)
Read data channel (R)
AXI slave
interface
AXI master
interface
AXI
master
AXI
slave
AXI master
interface
AXI slave
interface
1. The letter x in the signal name denotes an AXI channel as follows:
AW Write address channel.
W Write data channel.
B Write response channel.
AR Read address channel.
R Read data channel.