Hard Processor System Technical Reference Manual: Agilex™ 5 SoCs

ID 814346
Date 4/01/2024
Public

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2.3.9. System Interconnect and Firewalls Features

The components of the hard processor system (HPS) communicate with one another, and with other portions of the SoC device, through the system interconnect. The system interconnect consists of the following layers:

  • Layer 1 and Layer 2 (L1, L2)
    • The L1 and L2 interconnect is completely contained in the MPU core. The L1 consists of the instruction and data cache for each processor in the system. The L2 interconnect consists of the L2 and L3 cache of the MPU cluster.
  • Layer 3 (L3)
    • The L3 interconnect is the high-performance tier of the interconnect. The L3 is used to move data between the L1, L2, L3, and L4 peripherals.
  • Layer 4 (L4)
    • The L4 interconnect is a lower performance tier of the interconnect used to connect low- to mid-level performance peripherals. The various L4 buses run off different clocks.

The system interconnect is a highly efficient packet-switched network that supports high-throughput traffic. The system interconnect is the main communication bus for the MPU and all hard IP blocks in the SoC device.

The system interconnect supports the following features:

  • Configurable Arm* TrustZone* -compliant firewall and security support.
    • Targets are placed in secure or non-secure zone.
      • Secure targets can only be accessed by secure transactions.
      • Non-secure targets can be accessed by any transaction.
    • Allows configuration of individual transactions as secure or non-secure at the initiating initiator.
    • All targets are secure at reset.
      • Target secure state can be changed in NOC Security Control Registers (SCR).
    • Some initiators are secure at reset.
      • Initiator Secure state is driven on a per-transaction basis or by system manager.
    • Security Control Registers (SCRs) are strictly secure-only.
  • Multi-tiered bus structure to separate high bandwidth initiators from lower bandwidth targets and control and status ports.
  • Quality of service (QoS) with three programmable levels of service on a per initiator basis.
  • On-chip debugging and tracing capabilities.

The system interconnect is based on the Arteris® FlexNoC™ network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect technology.

For information about the FlexNoC™ network-on-chip interconnect, refer to the Arteris website: https://www.arteris.com/