PHY Interface for the PCI Express (PCIe), SATA, USB, DisplayPort, and USB4 Architectures (PIPE) enables the development of the Physical Layer (PHY) and Media Access Layer (MAC) design separately, providing a standard communication interface between these two components in the system.
In recent years, the PIPE interface specification has incorporated many enhancements to support new features and advancements happening in the supported protocols. As the supported features increase, so does the count of signals on PIPE interface. To address the issue of increasing signal count, the message bus interface was introduced in PIPE 4.4 and utilized for PCIe lane margining at the receiver and elastic buffer depth control.
In PIPE 5.0, all the legacy PIPE signals without critical timing requirements were mapped into message bus registers so that their associated functionality could be accessed via the message bus interface instead of implementing dedicated signals. It was decided that any new feature added in the new version of PIPE specification will be available only via message bus accesses unless they have critical timing requirements that need dedicated signals.
Message Bus Interface
The message bus interface provides a way to initiate and participate in non-latency-sensitive PIPE operations using a small number of wires. It also enables future PIPE operations to be added without adding additional wires. The use of this interface requires the device to be in a power state with PCLK running.
Control and status bits used for PIPE operations are mapped into 8-bit registers that are hosted in 12-bit address spaces in the PHY and the MAC. The registers are accessed using read-and-write commands driven over the signals M2P_MessageBus[7:0] and P2M_MessageBus[7:0]. These signals are synchronous with the PCLK and are reset with Reset#.
Message Bus Interface Commands
The 4-bit commands are used for accessing the PIPE registers across the message bus. A transaction consists of a command and any associated address and data.
All the following are time multiplexed over the bus from MAC and PHY:
- Commands (write_uncommitted, write_committed, read, read completion, write_ack)
- 12-bit address used for all types and read and writes
- 8-bit data, either read or written
There can be cases where multiple PIPE interface signals can change on the same PCLK. To address such cases, the concept of write_uncommitted and write_committed is introduced.
The uncommitted write should be saved into a write buffer, and its associated data values are updated into the relevant PIPE register at a future time when a write_committed is received, taking effect during the same PCLK cycle. Once a write_committed is sent, no new writes, whether committed or uncommitted, and any read command may be sent until a write_ack is received. Also, it is allowed to send NOP commands between write uncommitted and write committed.
A simple timing demonstration of message bus:
Message Address Space
MAC and PHY each implement unique 12-bit address spaces. These address spaces will host registers associated with the PIPE operations. MAC accesses PHY registers using M2P_MessageBus[7:0], and PHY accesses the MAC registers using the M2P_MessageBus[7:0].
The MAC and PHY access specific bits in the registers to: initiate operations, Initiate handshakes, and Indicate status.
Each 12-bit address space is divided into four main regions: the receiver address region, the transmitter address region, the common address region, and the vendor-specific address region.
Each register field has an attribute description of either level or 1-cycle assertion. When a level field is written, the value written is maintained by the hardware until the next write to that field or until a reset occurs. When a 1-cycle field is written to assert the value high, the hardware maintains the assertion for only a single cycle and then automatically resets the value to zero on the next cycle.
Cadence has a mature Verification IP solution for the verification of various aspects and topologies of PIPE PHY design. For more details, you may refer to the Simulation VIP for PIPE PHY | Cadence page, or you may send an email to support@cadence.com.