Replaces the PLL-fed 54 MHz `capture` domain, which oversampled the GC's
27 MHz EXI clock 2x and so put BIT-level timing across a CDC boundary: the
engine's view of the clock lagged the pin by 2 FFSynchronizer stages plus a
register (~55 ns) against a 37 ns bit time, so MISO came out ~2 bits late and
the GC read 0x17 as 05 C0. No amount of oversampling fixes that -- 54 MHz
gives only 2 ticks per bit and the part cannot close the 81 MHz that 3x needs.
The engine is now clocked by the pin itself (pin 44 = global buffer input net
6, no board change), making MISO clock-to-Q. ExiCapture creates four domains:
exiclk (posedge, samples MOSI), exiclk_n (negedge, drives MISO), both
async-reset by CS, plus reset-less exififo_w/exififo_r for the byte FIFO sides
-- reset-less because resetting one side of an AsyncFIFO desynchronises its
gray pointers, and posedge because AsyncFIFO has a posedge-only reset CDC
internally and cannot host a negedge side.
Also removes the SPRAM response FIFO. The DMA read was one byte late because
the round trip did not fit the protocol's turnaround byte; the arbiter already
exposed valid/ready, so the FIFO bought a cycle of latency and nothing else.
The response is handled outside the FSM (the reply lands in RHDR_PAD, not
SPRAM_STREAM) with a one-entry hold for when tx_fifo is momentarily full.
The PLL was left instantiated but unused after the rewrite; removing it frees
the hard macro and pin 35 (which stays unconnected only because the board is
already built that way). This is what lifted the pass rate:
domain target before after
clk (sync) 24 MHz 28.1-30.2 26.4-32.2 8/8
capture_clk 54 MHz 2 of 8 PASS (gone)
EXI pin domain 27 MHz -- 45.6-64.4 8/8
Best seed 3: clk 32.18 MHz, EXI 55.86 MHz. The binding constraint has FLIPPED
-- `clk` (1.10-1.34x) is now tighter than the EXI domain (1.69-2.39x) -- so
synth.py ranks seeds by worst RELATIVE margin, not by the EXI number.
synth.py could not have scored this design at all: it required the vanished
capture_clk, and its regex '(\w+)' cannot match nextpnr's exi_clk_$glb_clk
(no $ in \w). add_clock_constraint was also landing on the wrong net -- under
EXI_J4 the clock is the AND of two pads, not either pad -- so nextpnr silently
fell back to a 12 MHz default and under-optimised the whole EXI domain.
Testbenches:
- spi_mode3_slave had lost its testbench entirely in the rewrite. Restored
with a strict Mode 3 master (changes MOSI on the falling edge, samples MISO
in the clock-low phase) and MUTATION-TESTED: flipping either clock edge in
the RTL makes it fail. Both of those bugs previously reached silicon
against a lax master that parked MOSI well before the edge.
- exi_j4 T2/T3 returned [0,4,2,2]. Real bug: the engine latches the FIFO head
at each byte boundary, so a 2-byte command header leaves only ONE drain
slot. DEVID streamed zeros until CS and left two stale bytes -- one too
many -- so the NEXT enumeration came back a slot late. DEVID now pushes
exactly four bytes and stops. Register-space reads may still over-push:
their 4-byte header gives three drain slots.
- Dead ports removed from SPIMode3Slave (hdr_bytes, frame_start, cs_active,
byte_idx) and the mode2 parameter is gone -- there is one correct edge
convention and it is now enforced by tests.
All 14 module suites pass, plus bba_top at EXI_HALF=1/2/8.
CLAUDE.md: rewrote the clocking, CDC inventory and module tables; marked the
2026-09-30 capture_clk measurements historical; and corrected the line in
"Critical Protocol Notes" that still stated the INVERTED edge convention
("MOSI sampled on falling, MISO driven on rising" is Mode 2) -- the original
implementation followed that doc error.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
bba_top wired ClockSignal("sync") to ClockSignal("exi"), so the two "domains"
were always the same physical clock net. Everything between them -- six
AsyncFIFOs and three PulseSynchronizers -- was pure latency and logic for a
crossing that did not exist.
* the six AsyncFIFOs become plain SyncFIFOs
* the three PulseSynchronizers become wires
* BBARegisterFile and ExiCapture move from m.d.exi to m.d.sync
* the exi ClockDomain is gone; HFOSC drives sync directly
The SPRAM request write port is also combinational now. A registered w_en
costs a 24 MHz cycle, and the protocol's turnaround byte (~296 ns at 27 MHz)
has no cycles to spare.
Passing: bba_register_file, spram_arbiter, rx_frame_assembler, tx_frame_drain,
w5100_parallel_master, uart_shell, status_panel. bba_top at EXI_HALF=1
(27 MHz, the hardware rate) passes device ID, PAR read/write, NWAYS, RWP and
the 34-byte TX frame.
STILL OPEN: the SPRAM/DMA read is one byte late. Removing the CDC was not
enough -- the remaining round trip is the rx crossing (exiclk->sync, a REAL
CDC, ~125 ns) plus FSM decode plus the spram_req FIFO, arbiter, SPRAM access
and spram_rsp FIFO, which still exceeds the turnaround byte. Next step: now
that it is all one domain, drop the two SPRAM FIFOs entirely and give the
register file a direct request/grant port on the arbiter -- that should take
the round trip to ~2-3 cycles and fit.
exi_capture and exi_j4 testbenches still assert removed behaviour (the CS-fall
flush and the old MISO slot timing) and need rewriting for the clocked engine.
Still WIP -- do not flash.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
tx_fifo.r_en popped from txld_cnt >= 2, hard-coded for the old invented
2-byte header where the data phase began at slot 2. The real protocol's
register space uses a 4-byte header, so data starts at slot 4 -- two bytes
were being consumed before the GC clocked any data, and every register read
came back wrong. On hardware: HIPR and NWAYS both read 0x00, and the device
ID returned 01 80 c0 c0 (stale bytes, including our own header command bytes
0x80/0xC0 echoing back out of the FIFO).
The threshold is now derived from byte 0 bit 7, which is exactly what selects
the header form: register space -> 4 slots, command space -> 2 slots.
Also removes the pad-slot filler byte the register file was pushing. That was
compensating for this bug rather than fixing it -- it made the simulation pass
while hardware still failed, which is how it slipped through. With the pop
threshold correct the filler is wrong, and both the unit and integration
testbenches agree without it.
All suites pass: bba_register_file, bba_top, exi_capture, exi_j4,
spi_mode3_slave, tx_frame_drain, spram_arbiter, rx_frame_assembler,
w5100_parallel_master.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replaces the invented 2-byte header (addr split across both bytes, 2-bit
length field) with the protocol libogc and Swiss actually speak:
command (bit7=0, 6-bit reg) [reg, 00, 00, data] one 4-byte transfer
register (bit7=1, 16-bit reg) [0x80|w<<6, ah, al, 00] + data until CS
This was not an optimisation: the old decoder read Swiss's NWAYS read
(80 00 31 00) as 'write 0x31 to NCRA', and bit 0 of 0x31 is RESET, so every
register read would have reset the device.
Changes:
* 16-bit address; no length field -- register reads and writes now stream
until CS, like the SPRAM path already did
* RHDR_LO starts the SPRAM fetch as soon as the address completes, using
the trailing header byte as the prefetch window the protocol provides
* command space serves EXI regs 0x02/0x03 (interrupt mask/status), the only
two Swiss uses
* EXI_GetID gets its own path: it offers just ONE header byte of warning, so
the first ID byte is pushed the instant byte 0 identifies the query
Two timing subtleties, both found by simulation and commented in place:
* MISO is driven LIVE from the tx FIFO head, so a byte pushed while the pad
byte is on the wire appears in the pad slot. A filler byte is parked
there (MISO is don't-care through the header) so the first real response
lands in data slot 0.
* the prefetch must be one-shot; re-firing while waiting for the pad byte
consumed the register stream early and shifted reads by a byte.
All testbenches updated to the real format and passing: bba_register_file
(7), bba_top (8 incl. the full W5100->SPRAM->GC loop and TX), exi_j4,
exi_capture, spi_mode3_slave, tx_frame_drain, spram_arbiter,
rx_frame_assembler, w5100_parallel_master. gc_bba_test rebuilt against the
new protocol.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
TXFrameDrain sat in IDLE until it had a length, and the length only reached
tx_ctrl when the NCRA ST bits were written -- after the GC had streamed the
whole frame. So the entire frame had to fit in the 16-deep tx_bytes FIFO, and
BBARegisterFile silently drops bytes when w_rdy is low (SPI cannot
back-pressure). On hardware this truncated frames at exactly 16 bytes: a
captured ARP had 16 correct bytes followed by the frame restarting over itself.
The length is now handed to the drain one cycle after the TWD_HI (0x35) write,
which the GC issues BEFORE streaming data. The drain starts early and blocks
on tx_bytes_r_rdy, consuming bytes as they arrive, so tx_bytes becomes a
rate-matching buffer instead of whole-frame storage. The ST write remains a
fallback trigger for software that skips TWD, guarded by tx_queued so one frame
is never queued twice.
Adds BBATop T8: streams a 34-byte frame (> the 16-deep FIFO) over EXI and
checks the W5100 model received it byte-for-byte. Verified to FAIL without the
fix with exactly the hardware symptom -- 16/34 bytes, first bad byte at index
16. The gap that let this ship: TXFrameDrain's own tests drive the FIFO
signals directly, and the BBATop test only covered the RX loop.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Roflin
Dennis Brentjes