Easily programmable memory controller which can access different speed memory devices on different cycles

Abstract

Abstract A memory controller for a computer system provides a series of queues between the processor and a PCI bus and the memory system. Memory coherency is maintained in two different ways. Before any read operations are accepted from the PCI bus, both of the posting queues must be empty. A content addressable memory (CAM) is utilized as the PCI-to-memory queue. When the processor performs a read request, the CAM is checked to determine if one of the pending write operations in the PCI-to-memory queue is to the same address as the read operation of the processor. If so, the read operation is not executed until the PCI-to-memory queue is cleared of the write. To resolve the problem of aborting a Memory Read Multiple operation, an abort signal from the PCI bus interface is received and as soon thereafter as can be done the read ahead cycle is terminated, even though the read ahead cycle has not fully completed. The memory controller has improved prediction rules based on whether the cycle is coming from the processor or is coming from the PCI bus to allow more efficient precharging when PCI bus cycles are used. The memory controller is highly programmable for multiple speeds and types of processors and several speeds of memory devices. The memory controller includes a plurality of registers that specify number of clock periods for the particular portions of a conventional dynamic random access memory cycle which are used to control state machine operations.

Inventors

• 👤 Jeffrey C. Stevens
• 👤 Gary W. Thome
• 👤 John E. Larson
• 👤 Michael J. Collins
• 👤 Michael Moriarty

Bibliographic Details