Filter
Top Products
Hardware Reference Manual 37
Intel
®
IXP2800 Network Processor
Technical Description
The Microengine provides the following functionality during the Idle state:
1. The Microengine continuously checks if a Context is in Ready state. If so, a new Context
begins to execute. If no Context is Ready, the Microengine remains in the Idle state.
2. Only the ALU instructions are supported. They are used for debug via special hardware
defined in number 3 below.
3. A write to the USTORE_ADDR Local CSR with the USTORE_ADDR[ECS] bit set, causing
the Microengine to repeatedly execute the instruction pointed by the address specified in the
USTORE_ADDR CSR. Only the ALU instructions are supported in this mode. Also, the result
of the execution is written to the ALU_OUT Local CSR rather than a destination register.
4. A write to the USTORE_ADDR Local CSR with the USTORE_ADDR[ECS] bit set, followed
by a write to the USTORE_DATA Local CSR loads an instruction into the Control Store. After
the Control Store is loaded, execution proceeds as described in number 3 above.
2.3.4 Datapath Registers
As shown in the block diagram in Figure 4, each Microengine contains four types of 32-bit
datapath registers:
1. 256 General Purpose registers
2. 512 Transfer registers
3. 128 Next Neighbor registers
4. 640 32-bit words of Local Memory
2.3.4.1 General-Purpose Registers (GPRs)
GPRs are used for general programming purposes. They are read and written exclusively under
program control. GPRs, when used as a source in an instruction, supply operands to the execution
datapath. When used as a destination in an instruction, they are written with the result of the
execution datapath. The specific GPRs selected are encoded in the instruction.
The GPRs are physically and logically contained in two banks, GPR A, and GPR B, defined in
Table 5.
2.3.4.2 Transfer Registers
Transfer (abbreviated as Xfer) registers are used for transferring data to and from the Microengine
and locations external to the Microengine, (for example DRAMs, SRAMs etc.). There are four
types of transfer registers.
• S_TRANSFER_IN
• S_TRANSFER_OUT
• D_TRANSFER_IN
• D_TRANSFER_OUT
TRANSFER_IN registers, when used as a source in an instruction, supply operands to the
execution datapath. The specific register selected is either encoded in the instruction, or selected
indirectly via T_INDEX. TRANSFER_IN registers are written by external units (A typical case is
when the external unit returns data in response to read instructions. However, there are other