Re: [spi-devel-general] [PATCH v2] spi: Add support for the OpenCores SPI controller.

[David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>]

On Tuesday 28 April 2009, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > > I couldn't really find a way to implement per-transfer overrides for the
> > > word size because the controller simply has no concept of word sizes. Is it
> > > in such cases still necessary to hardwire the word size to 8 bits?
> > 
> > Is this the http://www.opencores.org/?do=project&who=spi core?
> 
> Yes, it is.
> 
> > Its summary says "Variable length of transfer word up to 32 bits";
> > does that mean "configurable when core is synthesized" instead of
> > truly "variable"?
> 
> That summary seems out-dated. The variable length of transfer word is
> actually the maximum length of a single transfer and is 128 bits in the
> latest version.

So long as they don't couple "transfer" with chipselect activation
and then de-activation, that's normal.

128 bits is pretty big, but it should make no difference to the slave
whether the host thinks of its data as one 128-bit word, sixteen 8-bit
words, one 9-bit word followed by a 119-bit one, or whatever.

Unless the design is broken, so that you can't send words without
flapping the chipselect.  That would surprise me.


> I'm not sure whether this is supposed to be the same as the word size. If it
> is it would mean that a single transfer can always only transfer one word.
> Which is kind of inefficient, I would think.

A "struct spi_transfer" should include a arbitrary number of
such words.  If the word size is over 8 bits, all the usual
byte ordering concerns come into play.  You may optimize the
register I/O however you like, so long as the bits on the
wire come out in the right sequence.

Ignoring clock options, the canonical SPI transfer starts by
activating a chip select, then clocking out an arbitrary number
of bits (clocking *in* one bit for each one clocked out), and
then de-activating chipselect.  Those bits are usually viewed
as a sequence of various-size words ... not necesarily all
the same size.  Example, some LCD controllers use 9-bit command
words followed by pixel data encoded in bytes.

Now, how the bits get to/from the controller is an area where
silicon can optimize.  For example, it's common to offload
that work to a DMA controller that can do burst operations
to keep the data bus efficiency high ... and to have a FIFO
in there, so those bursts can be bigger than the word size.

- Dave