Flash Rom; Serial Eeprom - LSI LSIFC929 Technical Manual

Dual channel fibre channerl i/o processor

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3.6.2 Flash ROM

The LSIFC929 ﬁrmware also supports optional byte wide parity error

detection. This option is conﬁgurable, and is speciﬁed as a serial

EEPROM parameter.

The amount of SSRAM (1 Mbyte) determines the maximum number of

outstanding Request Messages (1024). This roughly equates to the

maximum number of outstanding I/O requests pending in the LSIFC929.

The memory controller in the LSIFC929 also manages an optional Flash

ROM. If present, the Flash ROM is used to store the ﬁrmware for the

LSIFC929 I/O Processor, and if desired, the INT 0x13 boot software.

If the Flash ROM is not used, then the host platform is responsible for

downloading the I/O Processor ﬁrmware to the LSIFC929 through the

PCI interface. The LSIFC929 supports a diagnostic interface, enabled

through a sequence of commands issued to the PCI conﬁguration space.

Firmware may be directly written to the LSIFC929 internal memory and

external SSRAM through the diagnostic interface. Details of this

implementation are available in the LSI Logic Fusion-MPT speciﬁcation.

Flash ROM is optional for the LSIFC929, but it is required for ﬁrmware

storage if INT 0x13 boot software is used. Flash ROM also simpliﬁes OS

driver requirements and implementations.

The Flash ROM is accessed using the upper eight bits of the Memory

Interface. If a Flash ROM is to be used, then it should have a capacity

of 1 Mbyte with a maximum access time of 150 ns. Please see the

LSI Logic Fusion-MPT speciﬁcation for more information regarding the

programming of the Flash ROM.

The serial EEPROM stores nonvolatile data for the LSIFC929, such as

the World Wide Name, VPD, and other vendor speciﬁc information. The

SEEPROM data is programmed by the ﬁrmware, so the ﬁrmware must

be downloaded and running before the SEEPROM is programmed. The

minimum required size of the EEPROM is 2 Kbytes; however, an 8 Kbyte

SEEPROM is required for full functionality.

Support Components

3-9

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