ARM NIC-301 User Manual

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Glossary 
ARM DDI 0397G
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Advanced Peripheral Bus (APB)
A simpler bus protocol than AXI and AHB. It is designed for use with ancillary or 
general-purpose peripherals such as timers, interrupt controllers, UARTs, and I/O ports. 
Connection to the main system bus is through a system-to-peripheral bus bridge that helps to 
reduce system power consumption.
AHB
See Advanced High-performance Bus.
AHB-Lite
A subset of the full AMBA AHB protocol specification. It provides all of the basic functions 
required by the majority of AMBA AHB slave and master designs, particularly when used with 
a multi-layer AMBA interconnect. In most cases, the extra facilities provided by a full AMBA 
AHB interface are implemented more efficiently by using an AMBA AXI protocol interface.
Aligned
A data item stored at an address that is divisible by the number of bytes that defines the data size 
is said to be aligned. Aligned words and halfwords have addresses that are divisible by four and 
two respectively. The terms word-aligned and halfword-aligned therefore stipulate addresses 
that are divisible by four and two respectively.
AMBA
See Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture.
APB
See Advanced Peripheral Bus.
AXI
See Advanced eXtensible Interface.
AXI channel order and interfaces
The block diagram shows:
the order in which AXI channel signals are described
the MI and SI conventions for AXI components.
AXI terminology
The following AXI terms are general. They apply to both masters and slaves:
Active read transaction 
A transaction for which the read address has transferred, but the last read data has 
not yet transferred.
Active transfer 
A transfer for which the xVALID handshake has asserted, but for which 
xREADY has not yet asserted.
Note
 The 
letter 
x in the signal name denotes an AXI channel as follows:
AW 
Write address channel.
Write data channel.
Write response channel.
AR 
Read address channel.
Read data channel.
AXI 
interconnect
Write address channel (
AW)
Write data channel (
W)
Write response channel (
B)
Read address channel (
AR)
Read data channel (
R)
Write address channel (
AW)
Write data channel (
W)
Write response channel (
B)
Read address channel (
AR)
Read data channel (
R)
AXI slave 
interface
AXI master 
interface
AXI
master
AXI
slave
AXI master 
interface
AXI slave 
interface