Additional Exercises

When Linux is used as the target OS for your application, memory allocation for your application is handled by Linux and the supporting libraries. If you declare an array on stack within a scope (int a[10000];) or allocate it dynamically using the standardmalloc()function, what you get is a section of memory that is contiguous in the Virtual Address Space provided by the processor and Linux. This buffer is typically split over multiple non-contiguous pages in the Physical Address Space, and Linux automatically does the Virtual-Physical address translation whenever the software accesses the array. However, the hardware functions and DMAs can only access the physical address space, and so the software drivers have to explicitly translate from the Virtual Address to the Physical Address for each array, and provide this physical address to the DMA or hardware function. As each array may be spread across multiple non-contiguous pages in Physical Address Space, the driver has to provide a list of physical page addresses to the DMA. DMA that can handle a list of pages for a single array is known as Scatter-Gather DMA. A DMA that can handle only single physical addresses is called Simple DMA. Simple DMA is cheaper than Scatter-Gather DMA in terms of the area and performance overheads, but it requires the use of a special allocator calledsds_alloc()to obtain physically contiguous memory for each array.

Lab1used themult_addtemplate to allow the use of Simple DMA. In the following exercises you force the use of other data movers such as Scatter-Gather DMA or AXIFIFO using pragmas, modify the source code to usemalloc()instead ofsds_alloc()and observe how Scatter-Gather DMA is automatically selected.