Freescale Semiconductor,inc.

Arm Limited

Nxp Usa, Inc.

Zheng Xu

Jason T Nearing

Tommi M Jokinen

Suraj Bhaskaran

William C Moyer

Michael D Snyder

Richard G Collins

Paul B Rawlins

Abdul Ghani Kanawati

Jamshed Jalal

Nitin Kumar Agarwal

Andrew David Tune

Shayan Zhang

Kun Xu

Sanjay Raghunath Deshpande

Klas Magnus Bruce

Sean James Salisbury

Arthur Brian Laughton

Anup Gangwar

William D Schwarz

Joseph Gergen

Guanghui Geng

Hema Ramamurthy

Timothy Nicholas Hay

Viswanath Chakrala

David Philip Lapp

Matt B Smittle

Charles Filip Brej

Ghani Kanawati

An apparatus and method of operating the apparatus are disclosed, where the apparatus has translation circuitry to perform translations of input data to generate a translation response comprising translated data. The translation is performed in dependence on translation configuration data stored in data storage. A processing element determines an associated error detection code in dependence on the input data and on the translated data, and causes the translation configuration data and the associated error detection code to be stored in the data storage. When translation of the input data is performed by the translation circuitry the translation configuration data and its associated error detection code are retrieved from the data storage and the input data is translated into the translated data in dependence on the translation configuration data. A verification error detection code is calculated in dependence on the input data and on the translated data. A difference between the associated error detection code and the verification error detection code triggers an error in the translation response.

Translation protection in a data processing apparatus

A fault tolerant data processing network includes a number of nodes intercoupled through an interconnect circuit. The micro-architectures of the nodes are configured for sending and receiving messages via the interconnect circuit. In operation, a first Request Node sends a read request to a Home Node. In response, the Home Node initiates transmission of the requested data to the first Request Node. When the first Request Node detects that a fault has occurred, it sends a negative-acknowledgement message to the first Home Node. In response, the Home Node again initiates transmission of the requested data to the first Request Node. The requested data may be transmitted from a local cache of a second Request Node or transmitted by a Slave Node after being retrieved from a memory. The data may be transmitted to the first Request Node via the Home Node or directly via the interconnect.

Method and apparatus for coherent interconnect recovery with protocol layer re-transmission

An apparatus for providing fault resilience has storage for providing a plurality of compare data blocks, and processing circuitry that performs, for each compare data block, a processing operation using the input data and the compare data block to produce a match condition indication for that compare data block. Performance of the processing operation for each compare data block should result in only one match condition indication indicating a match. Evaluation circuitry evaluates the match condition indications produced for the plurality of compare data blocks and is arranged, in the presence of only one match condition indication indicating a match, to perform a false hit check procedure in order to check for presence of a false hit. In the presence of the false hit, the evaluation circuitry produces an error indication as the outcome indication, but otherwise produces a hit indication as the outcome indication.

Fault resilient apparatus and method

A method comprises generating, using a computer, an integrated circuit layout including a plurality of data handling nodes interconnected by routing circuitry defining data packet routes between the plurality of data handling nodes; for a transaction source node configured to generate data packets associated with a data handling translation between that transaction source node and a transaction target node and having one or more routing data fields controlling routing of the data packet, detecting, using the computer, a difference between a first routing controlled by the one or more routing data fields and a selected second routing provided by the integrated circuit layout; and providing, using the computer, one or more data mapping nodes in the integrated circuit layout to map an initial value of one or more of the routing data fields of a data packet generated by the transaction source node to a mapped data value, so that the mapped data value controls routing of the data packet using the selected second routing.

Integrated circuit design and fabrication

Virtual channel assignment in a network is achieved by constructing a Traffic Conflict Graph (TCG) dependent upon a network interconnect topology. The TCG has vertices corresponding to traffic entries in a network specification and edges that connect pairs of vertices. An edge weight, dependent upon interconnect topology and traffic flow characteristics, is assigned to each edge. The vertices are colored using minimum or soft coloring and the virtual channels are mapped to the traffic entries, according to the resulting colors, to provide a virtual channel assignment. The TCG may be constructed by generating a vertex in the TCG to represent each traffic entry, assigning a traffic flow characteristic of a traffic entry to a corresponding vertex and generating an edge between first and second vertices when a number of 'qualified' common edges, across all routes for corresponding traffic entries, is greater than zero.

Virtual channel assignment for topology constrained network-on-chip design

An interconnection network for providing data transfer between a plurality of nodes of an integrated circuit comprises a number of endpoints for exchanging data with respective nodes of the integrated circuit, a primary network to route a primary payload from a source endpoint to a destination endpoint; and a redundant network to route, to the destination endpoint, a redundant payload comprising a first check code calculated based on at least a portion of the primary payload, the first check code having fewer bits than said at least a portion of the primary payload. The destination endpoint comprises error checking circuitry to perform an error checking operation to calculate a second check code based on the primary payload received via the primary network, and verify integrity of the primary payload based on a comparison of the second check code with the first check code received via the redundant network.

Interconnection network for integrated circuit

An interrupt controller, and method of operation of such an interrupt controller, are provided. The interrupt controller has an interrupt source interface for receiving interrupts from one or more interrupt sources, and a plurality of output interfaces, where each output interface is associated with a processing device that can execute an interrupt service routine to process an interrupt request issued to that processing device. The interrupt source interface has transaction generation circuitry to generate, for each received interrupt, an original transaction to represent the interrupt and a duplicate transaction to represent the interrupt. Buffer circuitry then buffers the original transaction and the duplicate transaction for each received interrupt, and selection circuitry is provided for selecting transactions from the buffer circuitry, and for routing each selected transaction for receipt by the output interface identified by an address portion of the selected transaction. Each output interface has queue storage comprising a plurality of queue entries, where each queue entry is allocated to a transaction received by the output interface and is used to store interrupt identifying information provided by a data portion of the transaction. The queue storage is arranged to maintain duplication tracking information to identify when both the original transaction and its associated duplicate transaction have been received by the output interface. Each output interface inhibits issuing an output signal that would cause an interrupt request for the original transaction to be sent to the associated processing device, until the duplication tracking information identifies that both the original transaction and the associated duplicate transaction have been received by that output interface. This provides an efficient functional safety compliant design for an interrupt controller.

Interrupt controller and method of operation of an interrupt controller

A multi-core processing system includes a first processing core, a second processing core, a task manager coupled to the first and second processing cores. The task manager is operable to receive context information of a task from the first processing core and provide the context information to the second processing core. The second processing core continues executing the task using the context information.

Multi-core system performing packet processing with context switching

A multi-core system configured to execute a plurality of tasks and having a semaphore engine and a direct memory access (DMA) engine capable of selecting, by a task scheduler of a first core, a first task for execution by the first core. In response to a semaphore lock request, the task scheduler of the first core switches the first task to an inactive state and selects a next task for execution by the first core. After the semaphore engine acquires the semaphore lock of the first semaphore, a data transfer request is provided to the DMA engine. In response to the data transfer request, the DMA engine transfers data associated with the locked first semaphore to the entry of the workspace of the first core.

Systems and methods for direct memory access coherency among multiple processing cores

A data processing system includes a processor core and ordering scope manager circuitry. The processor core sends an indication of a first ordering scope identifier for a current ordering scope a task currently being executed by the processor core and a second ordering scope identifier for a next-in-order ordering scope of the task. The ordering scope manager receives the indication the first and second ordering scope identifiers from processor core, and, provides a no task switch indicator to the processor core in response to determining that the first task is a first-in-transition-order task for the first ordering scope identifier and that processor core is authorized to execute the next-in-order ordering scope. The processor core transitions from executing in the current ordering scope to executing in the next-in-order ordering scope without performing task switch in response to the no task switch indicator being provided.

System and method for conditional task switching during ordering scope transitions

A data processing system includes a processor core and a hardware module. The processor core performs tasks on data packets. The hardware module stores a first ordering scope identifier at a first storage location of the ordering scope manager. The first ordering scope identifier indicates a first ordering scope that a first task is operating in. The ordering scope manager increments the first ordering scope identifier to create a new ordering scope identifier. In response to determining that the processor core is authorized to transition the first task from the first ordering scope to a second ordering scope associated with the new ordering scope identifier, the ordering scope manager provides hint information to the processor core. The processor core transitions from the first ordering scope to the second ordering scope without completing a task switch in response to the hint information.

A technique for tracing processes executing in a multi-threaded processor includes forming a trace message that includes a virtual core identification (VCID) that identifies an associated thread. The trace message, including the VCID, is then transmitted to a debug tool.

Techniques for tracing processes in a multi-threaded processor

In one or more embodiments, a data processing system can include at least one core capable of executing instructions of an instruction set architecture and a trace unit coupled to the at least one core. A call to a subroutine can be detected, and in response, a program trace correlation (PTC) message can be generated and sent to a trace port. Data associated with an execution of the subroutine and/or performance of the data processing system can be sampled and sent to the trace port. A return from the subroutine can be detected, and in response, a trace message can be generated and sent to the trace port. The PTC message and the trace message can be correlated, and the correlation of the PTC message and the trace message can be used to determine a boundary for the subroutine and/or the sampled data associated with the execution of the subroutine.

Trace correlation for profiling subroutines

Complex on-chip interconnect fabrics, particularly those that include point-to-point interconnects and coherent routing networks, can present significant challenges for conventional trace techniques that may be applied in an effort to efficiently provide an external debugger with visibility into on-chip interconnect transactions. Embodiments described herein generate and supply separate in-circuit-trace messages including address messages and data messages, which are sent out (i.e., off-chip) to external debug tools generally without delay and coincident with the distinct, but related, trace events within address and data paths of the interconnect fabric. These separate message instances embed appropriate tag and mark values to allow the message instances to be post-processed and correlated by the external debug tools so as to reconstruct the transaction information for operations performed in the on-chip interconnect.

Tracing support for interconnect fabric

In one or more embodiments, a data processing system can include at least one core capable of executing instructions of an instruction set architecture and a triggered memory map access (tMMA) system coupled to the at least one core. The tMMA system can receive one or more events and, in response, perform one or more actions. For example, the actions can include transactions which can include a write to a an address of the memory map, a read from an address of the memory map, a read followed by write to two respective addresses of the memory map, and/or a fetch transaction. A result of a transaction (e.g., data read, data written, error, etc.) can be used in generating a trace message. For example, the tMMA system can generate a trace message that includes the result of the transaction and send the trace message to a trace message bus.

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Zheng Xu