COM20020 Datasheet, PDF (44/72 Pages) SMSC Corporation – COM20020 3.3V ULANC Universal Local Area Network Controller with 2K x 8 On-Board RAM

COMMAND CHAINING
The Command Chaining operation allows
consecutive transmissions and receptions to occur
without host microcontroller intervention.
Through the use of a dual two-level FIFO,
commands to be transmitted and received, as well
as the status bits, are pipelined.
In order for the COM20020 to be compatible with
previous SMSC ARCNET device drivers, the
device defaults to the non-chaining mode. In order
to take advantage of the Command Chaining
operation, the Command Chaining Mode must be
enabled via a logic "1" on bit 6 of the Configuration
Register.
In Command Chaining, the Status Register
appears as in Figure 10.
The following is a list of Command Chaining
guidelines for the software programmer. Further
detail can be found in the Transmit Command
Chaining and Receive Command Chaining
sections.
#$ The device is designed such that the interrupt
service routine latency does not affect
performance.
#$ Up to two outstanding transmissions and two
outstanding receptions can be pending at any
given time. The commands may be given in
any order.
#$ Up to two outstanding transmit interrupts and
two outstanding receive interrupts are stored
by the device, along with their respective
status bits.
#$ The Interrupt Mask bits act on TTA (Rising
Transition on Transmitter Available) for
transmit operations and TRI (Rising
Transition of Receiver Inhibited) for receive
operations. TTA is set upon completion of a
packet transmission only. TRI is set upon
completion of a packet reception only.
Typically there is no need to mask the TTA
and TRI bits after clearing the interrupt.
#$ The traditional TA and RI bits are still
available to reflect the present status of the
device.
Transmit Command Chaining
When the processor issues the first "Enable
Transmit to Page fnn" command, the COM20020
responds in the usual manner by resetting the TA
and TMA bits to prepare for the transmission from
the specified page. The TA bit can be used to see
if there is currently a transmission pending, but the
TA bit is really meant to be used in the non-
chaining mode only. The TTA bits provide the
relevant information for the device in the
Command Chaining mode.
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