External Memory Interfaces Intel® Cyclone® 10 GX FPGA IP User Guide

ID 683663
Date 3/29/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents

3.4.1.1. Hard Memory Controller Features

Table 6.  Features of the Intel® Cyclone® 10 Hard Memory Controller

Feature

Description

Memory devices support

Supports the following memory devices:

  • DDR3 SDRAM
  • LPDDR3 for low power
Memory controller support
  • Custom controller support—configurable bypass mode that allows you to bypass the hard memory controller and use custom controller.
  • Ping Pong controller—allows two instances of the hard memory controller to time-share the same set of address/command pins.
Interface protocols support
  • Supports the Avalon® -MM interface.
  • The PHY interface adheres to the AFI protocol.
Rate support You can configure the controller to run at half rate or quarter rate.
Configurable memory interface width
Burst adaptor Able to accept bursts of any size up to a maximum burst length of 127 on the local interface of the controller and map the bursts to efficient memory commands.
Note: For applications that must adhere strictly to the Avalon® -MM specification, the maximum burst length is 64.
Efficiency optimization features
  • Open-page policy—by default, data traffic is closed-page on every access. However, the controller keeps a row open based on incoming traffic, which can improve controller efficiency, especially for random traffic.
  • Preemptive bank management—the controller can issue bank management commands early, to ensure that the required row is already open when the read or write occurs.
  • Data reordering—the controller reorders read and write commands.
  • Additive latency—the controller can issue a READ/WRITE command after the ACTIVATE command to the memory bank, before tRCD, which increases the command efficiency
User requested priority You can assign priority to commands. This feature allows you to specify that higher priority commands get issued earlier to reduce latency.
Starvation counter Ensures all requests are served after a predefined time out period, which ensures that low priority accesses are not left behind while reordering data for efficiency.
Timing for address/command bus
To maximize command bandwidth, you can double the number of memory commands in one controller clock cycle:
  • Quasi-1T addressing for half-rate address/command bus
  • Quasi-2T addressing for quarter-rate address/command bus
Bank interleaving Able to issue read or write commands continuously to random addresses. You must correctly cycle the bank addresses.
On-die termination The controller controls the on-die termination signal for the memory. This feature improves signal integrity and simplifies your board design.
Refresh features
  • User-controlled refresh timing—optionally, you can control when refreshes occur. This allows you to prevent important read or write operations from clashing with the refresh lock-out time.
  • Per-rank refresh—allows refresh for each individual rank.
  • Controller-controlled refresh.
ECC support
  • 8-bit ECC code; single error correction, double error detection (SECDED).
  • User ECC supporting pass-through user ECC bits as part of data bits.
Power saving features
  • Low-power modes (power down and self-refresh)—optionally, you can request that the controller put the memory into one of the two low-power states.
  • Automatic power down—puts the memory device in power-down mode when the controller is idle. You can configure the idle waiting time.
  • Memory clock gating.
Mode register set Access the memory mode register.
LPDDR3 features
  • Deep power-down mode—achieves maximum power reduction by eliminating power to the memory array. Data is not retained when the device enters deep power-down mode.
  • Partial array self-refresh.
  • Per-bank refresh.
ZQ calibration command Support long or short ZQ calibration command for DDR3.