H2C and C2H Queues - 4.0 English

QDMA Subsystem for PCI Express Product Guide (PG302)

Document ID
PG302
Release Date
2022-05-20
Version
4.0 English

H2C/C2H queues are rings located in host memory. For both type of queues, the producer is software and consumer is the descriptor engine. The software maintains producer index (PIDX) and a copy of hardware consumer index (HW CIDX) to avoid overwriting unread descriptors. The descriptor engine also maintains consumer index (CIDX) and a copy of SW PIDX, which is to make sure the engine does not read unwritten descriptors. The last entry in the queue is dedicated for the status descriptor where the engine writes the HW CIDX and other status.

The engine maintains a total of 2048 H2C and 2048 C2H contexts in local memory. The context stores properties of the queue, such as base address (BADDR), SW PIDX, CIDX, and depth of the queue.

Figure 1. Simple H2C and C2H Queue

The figure above shows the H2C and C2H fetch operation.

  1. For H2C, the driver writes payload into host buffer, forms the H2C descriptor with the payload buffer information and puts it into H2C queue at the PIDX location. For C2H, the driver forms the descriptor with available buffer space reserved to receive the packet write from the DMA.
  2. The driver sends the posted write to PIDX register in the descriptor engine for the associated Queue ID (QID) with its current PIDX value.
  3. Upon reception of the PIDX update, the engine calculates the absolute QID of the pointer update based on address offset and function ID. Using the QID, the engine will fetch the context for the absolute QID from the memory associated with the QDMA Subsystem for PCIe.
  4. The engine determines the number of descriptors that are allowed to be fetched based on the context. The engine calculates the descriptor address using the base address (BADDR), CIDX, and descriptor size, and the engine issues the DMA read request.
  5. After the descriptor engine receives the read completion from the host memory, the descriptor engine delivers them to the H2C Engine or C2H Engine in internal mode. In case of bypass, the descriptors are sent out to the associated descriptor bypass output interface.
  6. For memory mapped or H2C stream queues programmed as internal mode, after the fetched descriptor is completely processed, the engine writes the CIDX value to the status descriptor. For queues programmed as bypass mode, user logic controls the write back through bypass in interface. The status descriptor could be moderated based on context settings. C2H stream queues always use the CMPT ring for the completions.

For C2H, the fetch operation is implicit through the CMPT ring.