Dual Path / Dual Bus Memory

Introduction
Dual Bus Operation
Single Bus Operation
Enhanced Dual Path Memory

Source: PS/2 Models 95 XP 486, 90 XP 486, 55LS and P75 486 Fundamentals (pp 53, 57 & 58)


Introduction

When bus masters were implemented on Micro Channel servers, it was found that there was often contention for memory access between the processor and the bus masters, and that the processor was being delayed waiting for bus masters to release the path into memory.

The new design of the processor complexes addresses these issues by providing a Dual Path into memory (aka Dual Bus Memory), effectively providing two paths to system memory, one from the processor and one from the Micro Channel. These two separate paths to system memory allow overlapping of processor and bus master cycles.

Note: Dual Path memory should not be confused with Interleaved Memory.


Figure 1. System Block Diagram of Dual Bus System

There are two paths to the memory through the memory controller:

  • A path from the CPU
  • A path from the Micro Channel

So, the CPU does not have a dedicated path to memory, instead, it can share access to the memory with a Bus Master. If you think about it, having a dedicated path would mean adding another 32 lines to the complex interface.

Why is this limited to the CPU and Bus Masters? If an adapter is being run PIO, that means the CPU is a lot more involved with controlling that adapter. A bus master can execute it's own operations.

Note: The memory used in the IBM PS/2 Model 90 and 95 XP 486 systems (and other models) is dual bus NOT dual-ported so the CPU may be held off for the current bus master transfer to complete, but not the full transfer.

Note: Type 2 complexes do not support Dual Path Memory.


Dual Bus Operation


Figure 2. Dual Bus Operation

A bus from the CPU to the memory controller, and a bus from the Micro Channel to the memory controller allows the CPU to use the system memory, while at the same time a bus master can be using the Micro Channel. The net result of this is a significant increase in processing power, but this will not be seen if you are using single tasking software, or running only one task in a multitasking environment.

In the Model 90 and 95 XP 486 systems the memory controller alternates access to the system memory between the CPU and any bus master. This will happen even if the bus master is controlling the bus to the memory. This can be seen in Figure 2 in the interleaving of Micro Channel Data (MD) with CPU Data (CD) between the memory controller and the memory.

During the time that a bus master has control of the system, the CPU can access the system memory. If a transfer is in process at the same instant that the CPU wants to use the memory, the CPU will be held off until that one part of the transfer has finished. It does not have to wait for the total transfer to have finished as in previous PS/2 systems. The wait for memory access is now @ 300 - 500 ns compared with up to 7 microseconds in previous PS/2 systems.


Figure 3. Dual Bus Timing

Figure 3 shows that the IBM PS/2 Model 90 and 95 XP 486 systems allow CPU cycles to overlap bus master cycles more than in previous systems. The CPU executes cycles even after a bus master starts executing cycles, but the PS/2 8570 hits a cycle that locks the CPU out much sooner than the IBM PS/2 Model 90 and 95 XP 486 systems.

Three kinds of overlapped cycles can occur:

  • CPU reads to L2 cache simultaneously with bus master I/O

    When the microprocessor is reading from or writing to its internal cache or to the optional 256 KB cache, the bus master that is controlling the Micro Channel bus has exclusive access to system memory.

  • CPU reads to L2 cache simultaneously with bus master memory access

    The microprocessor and the bus master that is controlling the Micro Channel bus can use the system memory at the same time, provided that they do not try to use the same memory locations.

  • CPU reads to memory simultaneously with bus master I/O

    When a bus master is reading from or writing to an I/O device or an adapter in a Micro Channel expansion slot, the microprocessor has exclusive access to system memory.

In computers that do not have a dual bus, the microprocessor is the default master, which means that it has to wait until no other masters are controlling the Micro Channel bus before it can have access to system memory.


Single Bus Operation

Without a dual path bus, there is often contention for system resources such as main memory. When contention between the processor and a bus master occurs, one has to wait for the other to finish its memory cycle before it can proceed. Thus, fast devices such as processors have to wait for much slower I/O devices, slowing down the performance of the entire system to the speed of the slowest device. This is very costly to the overall system performance.


Figure 4. Single Bus Operation

The bus master can hold the system bus, and as there is only one bus, it does not matter to which part of the system the bus master is transferring data. The CPU will have to wait, and arbitrate for control of the system bus, so that it can get to the system memory. This was good for the bus masters, but not so good for the CPU. When a bus master took control of the system bus, the processor had to wait for the bus master to release the bus, or had to arbitrate for control of the bus. This could take up to 7 microseconds.


Enhanced Dual Path Memory

Although Type 1 and complexes allow both the processor and busmasters to access memory concurrently through two paths, the Type 3 and Type 4 has buffers at both paths to provide better performance. Also the buffer on the adapter side (I/O buffer) uses packet data transfers for writes. This means 16 bytes are collected and this packet is written in one cycle to memory as opposed to writing for every 4 bytes received (as with unbuffered systems).

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