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4–28 Cache and External Interfaces
Alpha 21264/EV67 Hardware Reference Manual
System Port
The 21264/EV67 holds pending probe commands in a 8-entry deep probe queue. The
system must count the number of probes that have been sent and ensure that the probes
do not overrun the 21264/EV67 queue. The 21264/EV67 removes probes from the
internal probe queue when the probe response is sent.
The 21264/EV67 expects to hit in cache on a probe response, so it always fetches a
cache block from the Bcache on system probes. This can become a performance prob-
lem for systems that do not monitor the Bcache tags, so the 21264/EV67 provides Cbox
CSR PRB_TAG_ONLY[0], which only accesses Bcache tags for system probes. For a
Bcache hit, the 21264/EV67 retries the probe reference to get the associated data. In
this mode, the 21264/EV67 has a cache-hit counter that maintains some history of past
cache hits in order to fetch the data with the tag in the cases where streamed transac-
tions are being performed to the host processor.
4.7.7.2 Data Transfer Commands (Two Cycles)
Data transfer commands use a 2-cycle format on SysAddIn_L[14:0]. The SysDc[4:0]
field indicates success or failure for ChangeToDirty and MB commands, and error con-
ditions as shown in Table 4–24.
The pattern of data is controlled by the SysDataInValid_L and SysDataOutValid_L
signals. These signals are valid each cycle of data transfer, indicating any gaps in the
data cycle pattern. The SysDataInValid_L and SysDataOutValid_L signals are
described in Section 4.7.8.4. Table 4–23 shows the format of the data transfer com-
mand.
101 Invalid
110 Transition1
2
: Clean ⇒ Clean/Shared
Dirty ⇒ Dirty/Shared
111 Reserved
1
Transition3 is useful in nonduplicate tag systems that want to give writable status to the reader and do
not know if the block is clean or dirty.
2
Transition1 is useful in nonduplicate tag systems that do not update memory on ReadBlk hits to a
dirty block in another processor.
Table 4–23 Data Transfer Command Format
SysAddIn_L[14:2] SysAddIn_L[1] SysAddIn_L[0]
Cycle 1 0 SysDc[4:0] RVB RPB A ID[3:0] X X
Cycle 2 C X X X
Table 4–22 Next Cache Block State Selection by Probe[2:0] (Continued)
Probe[2:0] Next Tag State