Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition User Guide: Platform Designer

ID 683364
Date 12/15/2018
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.6.2.2.3. Burst Avalon® -MM Interfaces

Burst transfers are commonly used for latent memories such as SDRAM and off-chip communication interfaces, such as PCI Express. To use a burst-capable slave interface efficiently, you must connect to a bursting master. Components that require bursting to operate efficiently typically have an overhead penalty associated with short bursts or non-bursting transfers.

You can use a burst-capable slave interface if you know that your component requires sequential transfers to operate efficiently. Because SDRAM memories incur a penalty when switching banks or rows, performance improves when SDRAM memories are accessed sequentially with bursts.

Architectures that use the same signals to transfer address and data also benefit from bursting. Whenever an address is transferred over shared address and data signals, the throughput of the data transfer is reduced. Because the address phase adds overhead, using large bursts increases the throughput of the connection.