To make use of the additional capacity from bridged structures we need at least one main initiator for each bus. However, a low speed bus might not have its own initiators: it is just a slave to one of the other busses.
Bus bridges provide full or partial connectivity and some may write post. Global address space, non-uniform access time (NUMA). Some busses might be slower, narrower or in different clock domains from others.
The maximum throughput is the sum of that of all the busses that have their own initiators, but the achieved throughput will be lower if the bridges are used a lot: a bridged cycle consumes bandwidth on both sides.
How and where to connect DRAM is always a key design issue. The DRAM may be connected via a cache. The cache may be dual ported on to two busses, or more.
Bus bridges and top-levels of structural wiring automatically generated. An example tool that does this is ARChitect2 from ARC International (now part of Virage Logic).
| 53: (C) 2008-13, DJ Greaves, University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory. |