Forum Discussion

Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
15 years ago

Stratix IV GX - QDR w/ Uniphy

I have a custom board with two x18 250MHz QDRs (GS8662D18E-250I). I am using the example project to test each QDR individually. One of the QDRs passes all the tests from the example driver while the other always fails. I do not have any trouble getting through calibration and the echo clock, as measured at the QDR looks good.

I did run the pin_assignments.tcl and timequest reports 0 failures.

I modified the example driver to only write 1's and a typical failure is shown in the attached screenshot. This should be a burst of 4 so it is as if the last x18 stage is not getting clocked in correctly.

Any thoughts as to what might be causing this? What can I do to correct this?

2 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    15 years ago

    I'm suspecting it has to do with the postamble timing. From the external memory interface handbook: Volume 4 Section III Debugging.

    Postamble Timing Issues and Margin

    The postamble timing is set by the PHY during calibration. You can diagnose

    postamble issues by viewing the pnf_per_byte signal from the example driver.

    Postamble timing issues mean only read data is corrupted during the last beat of any read request.

    That is the only information that it provides on the topic. How would one make adjustments to correct this?
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    15 years ago

    Getting through calibration was a false positive. The sequencer will eventually get the correct data for the valid calibration part of the state machine. The latency calibration usually fails right away further complicating things when it added margin causing the latency counter to roll over.

    Now that I have added protection to that counter my bad results are more consistent. Usually only 1 sometimes 2 beats of the read are wrong. I do occasionally get the correct value, as calibration has shown. I'm not sure there is anything I can do on-die to correct this. I still don't know why it is occurring, but it seems to have something to do with the QDR itself. Any thoughts?