Roflin 91c3bf0ece Clock the EXI bit engine from the EXI pin: timing closes on all 8 seeds
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>
2026-10-03 18:36:51 +02:00
2026-06-13 19:02:58 +02:00
2026-08-28 10:29:41 +02:00
2026-06-16 14:59:18 +02:00
2026-08-28 10:29:41 +02:00
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