EF_PSRAM_CTRL_V2

Pseudostatic RAM (PSRAM) is DRAM combined with a self-refresh circuit. It appears externally as slower SRAM, albeit with a density/cost advantage over true SRAM, and without the access complexity of DRAM.

The controller was designed after:

• https://www.issi.com/WW/pdf/66-67WVS4M8ALL-BLL.pdf and
• https://www.microchip.com/en-us/parametric-search/514

utilizing SPI, QSPI and QPI modes.

The controller was verified against the Verilog model of Microchip M23LC1024 for SPI and QPI modes only.

Features:

• Small in size (800 cells)
• Supports PSRAM or serial SRAM memories up to 8MBytes.
• Programmable to configure: read/write commands, number of wait states, enter and exist quad i/o commands.

General Information

• Maturity: Integrated
• Certification: EF Certified
• Provider: Efabless
• License: Apache Open Source
• Category: Random Access Memory
• Foundry: N/A
• Node: N/A
• PDK: Soft IP

The wrapped IP

The IP comes with an AHBL Wrapper

Wrapped IP System Integration

EF_PSRAM_CTRL_V2_ahbl INST (
        `TB_AHBL_SLAVE_CONN,
        .sck(sck),
        .ce_n(ce_n),
        .din(din),
        .dout(dout),
        .douten(douten)
);

NOTE: `TB_AHBL_SLAVE_CONN is a convenient macro provided by BusWrap.

Implementation example

The following table is the result for implementing the EF_PSRAM_CTRL_V2 IP with different wrappers using Sky130 PDK and OpenLane2 flow.

The Programmer's Interface

Memory Map

Registers

rd_cmd Register [Offset: 0x800100, mode: w]

RD Command Register

wr_cmd Register [Offset: 0x800200, mode: w]

WR Command Register

eqpi_cmd Register [Offset: 0x800400, mode: w]

Enter QPI Command Register

xqpi_cmd Register [Offset: 0x800800, mode: w]

Exit QPI Command Register

wait_states Register [Offset: 0x801000, mode: w]

Wait States Register

mode Register [Offset: 0x802000, mode: w]

I/O Mode Register, {qpi, qspi}

enter_qpi Register [Offset: 0x804000, mode: w]

Initiate Enter QPI (EQPI) Mode process Register

exit_qpi Register [Offset: 0x808000, mode: w]

Initiate Exit QPI (XQPI) Mode process Register

The Interface

F/W Usage Guidelines:

Out of reset, the controller is in the standard SPI mode which is supported by all SPI memories.

Performing a memory read or a memory write from/to the data region will trigger the corresponding SPI command and is fully transparent to the CPU and it looks like a normal memory/read operation.

Switch to QPI mode:

1. Set RD/WR/Enter QPI/Exit QPI commands by writing to the corresponding configuration registers based on the memory datasheet.
2. Set the number of wait states used by the read command by writing to the Wait States Register.
3. Write "1" to the Initiate EQPI Mode process register.
4. Perform a memory read/write to a data address
5. Write "0" to the Initiate EQPI Mode process register.
6. Wait for the memory to switch to quad i/o mode. Consult the datasheet to obtain the latency.
7. Write "2" to the i/o mode register

Installation:

You can either clone repo or use IPM which is an open-source IPs Package Manager

• To clone repo: git clone https://github.com/efabless/EF_PSRAM_CTRL_V2.git
• To download via IPM , follow installation guides here then run ipm install EF_PSRAM_CTRL

Run cocotb UVM Testbench:

TBD