TX passes at 27 MHz; remaining DMA offset traced to needless exi/sync CDC

The TX failure was a TESTBENCH artifact, not a design bug.  Between
transactions the bench raised CS for one HP -- 18.5 ns at EXI_HALF=1 -- but
cs_active reaches the exi domain through a 2-stage FFSynchronizer at 24 MHz,
so the register file never saw one transaction end and swallowed the next
one's header as write data.  A real host leaves microseconds between
exi_deselect() and the next exi_select().  With a realistic gap the 34-byte TX
frame now matches byte-for-byte at the hardware rate.

At EXI_HALF=1 (27 MHz) bba_top now passes device ID, PAR read/write, NWAYS,
RWP and TX.  The one remaining failure is the SPRAM/DMA stream, offset by
exactly one byte.

Root cause of that offset, and it is not architectural: bba_top.py:171 does
    m.d.comb += ClockSignal("sync").eq(ClockSignal("exi"))
so exi and sync are LITERALLY THE SAME CLOCK NET.  Every AsyncFIFO between
them is pure overhead.  The SPRAM round trip pays two needless CDC crossings
(~6 cycles, ~250 ns) on top of the arbiter and SPRAM access, giving ~375 ns
against the ~170 ns the protocol's turnaround byte actually leaves once the rx
crossing is subtracted.  Register reads are unaffected because their response
is immediate; only SPRAM is late.

Fix direction: merge the two domains and replace the exi<->sync AsyncFIFOs and
PulseSynchronizers with plain SyncFIFOs/signals.  That removes the latency,
drops a lot of logic, and cannot change behaviour because the clocks are
already identical.

Known failing, both testing removed behaviour rather than new bugs:
  * exi_capture's own testbench asserts the CS-fall flush and the old MISO
    slot timing; the flush no longer exists (header pops drain the FIFO).
  * exi_j4's T3 re-enumerate is off by a byte.
Still WIP -- do not flash.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-10-03 16:56:03 +02:00
parent a3b3e052bc
commit da21a080d9
3 changed files with 25 additions and 3 deletions
+9
View File
@@ -42,6 +42,15 @@ if __name__ == "__main__":
from exi_bba.bba_top import BBATop
HALF = 8 # capture ticks per SPI half-period (well oversampled)
# No capture domain any more: the bit engine is clocked by the EXI
# pin, so drive the SPI clock with real delays instead of ticks.
HP = Period(MHz=54) * HALF
DEVICE_ID = [0x04, 0x02, 0x02, 0x00]
class _Harness(Elaboratable):