P-Tile Avalon® Streaming Intel® FPGA IP for PCI Express* User Guide

ID 683059
Date 4/04/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

4.4.4. RX Flow Control Interface

The RX flow control interface provides information on the application's available RX buffer space to the PCIe Hard IP in a time-division multiplexing (TDM) manner. It reports the space available in number of TLPs.

The RX flow control interface is optional and disabled by default in the IP GUI. If disabled, it indicates that there is no limit in the application RX buffer space.

Figure 21. RX Flow Control Interface's TDM Reporting of Credit Limits
Flow control credits are available for the following TLP categories:
  • Posted (P) transactions: TLPs that do not require a response.
  • Non-posted (NP) transactions: TLPs that require a completion.
  • Completions (CPL): TLPs that respond to non-posted transactions.
Figure 22. Example of a Buffer Limits Update
Table 53.  Categorization of Transaction Types
TLP Type Category
Memory Write Posted
Memory Read Non-posted
Memory Read Lock
I/O Read Non-posted
I/O Write
Configuration Read Non-posted
Configuration Write
Message Posted
Completion Completion
Completion with Data
Completion Lock
Completion Lock with Data
Fetch and Add AtomicOp Non-posted
Table 54.  Credits Advertised by the P-tile PCIe Hard IP
RX Buffer Segment core_x16 (Port 0) core_x8 (Port 1) core_x4 (Ports 2/3)
Scaled Flow Control Disabled (Credit) Scaled Flow Control Enabled (Scale Factor, Credit) Scaled Flow Control Disabled (Credit) Scaled Flow Control Enabled (Scale Factor, Credit) Scaled Flow Control Disabled (Credit) Scaled Flow Control Enabled (Scale Factor, Credit)
Posted Headers 127 3, 49 127 2. 98 127 2, 56
Posted Data 1456 1, 1456 760 1, 760 396 1, 396
Non-posted Headers 127 3, 49 127 2, 98 127 2, 56
Non-posted Data 392 1, 392 196 1, 196 112 1, 112
Note: In the 1x8 mode, the advertised credits are for core_x16 (Port 0).
Table 55.  RX Flow Control Interface
Signal Name Direction Description Clock Domain EP/RP/BP
rx_buffer_limit_i[11:0] I

When the RX Flow Control Interface is enabled, the application can use these signals for TLP flow control. These signals indicate the application RX buffer space made available since reset/initialization.

Initially, the signals are set according to the buffer size (in terms of the number of TLPs the RX buffer can take). The value of these signals always increments and rolls over. For example, if the initial value is 0xfff, the rx_buffer_limit_i[11:0] value increments by 1 and rolls over to 0x000 when one received TLP exits the application RX buffer.

If a TLP type is blocked due to a lack of the corresponding RX buffer space in the application layer, other TLP types may bypass it per the PCIe transaction ordering rules.

Note that the initial value of rx_buffer_limit_i[11:0] cannot be larger than 2048 TLPs.

coreclkout_hip EP/RP/BP
rx_buffer_limit_tdm_idx_i[1:0] I These signals indicate the type of buffer for the corresponding rx_buffer_limit_i[11:0] signals. The Application Layer should provide the buffer limit information for all the enabled ports in a TDM manner. The following encodings are defined:
  • 00: buffer limit for P type of TLPs.
  • 01: buffer limit for NP type.
  • 10: buffer limit for CPL type.
  • 11: reserved.
coreclkout_hip EP/RP/BP

For more details on the usage of the scale factors, refer to Section 3.4.2 of the PCI Express Base Specification, Rev. 4.0 Version 1.0.