Sharing bus bandwidth
The DMA controller has to compete with the processor for external bus
bandwidth to transfer data and as such can affect the processor’s performance
directly. With processors that do not have any cache or internal memory, such
as the 80286 and the MC68000, their bus utilisation is about 80–95% of the
bandwidth and therefore any delay in accessing external memory will result in a
decreased processor performance budget and potentially longer interrupt latency
— more about this in the chapter on interrupts.
For devices with caches and/or internal memory, their external bus
bandwidth requirements are a lot lower and thus the DMA controller can use bus
cycles without impeding the proces-sor’s performance. This last statement
depends on the chances of the DMA controller using the bus at the same time as
the proces-sor. This in turn depends on the frequency and size of the DMA
transfers. To provide some form of flexibility for the designer so that a
suitable trade-off can be made, most DMA controllers support different types of
bus utilisation.
•
Single transfer
Here the bus is returned back to the processor after every transfer so
that the longest delay it will suffer in getting access to memory will be a bus
cycle.
•
Block transfer
Here the bus is returned back to the processor after the complete block
has been sent so that the longest delay the processor will suffer will be the
time of a bus cycle multi-plied by the number of transfers to move the block.
In effect, the DMA controller has priority over the CPU in using the bus.
•
Demand transfer
In this case, the DMA controller will hold the bus for as long as an
external device requests it to do so. While the bus is held, the DMA controller
is at liberty to transfer data as and when needed. In this respect, there may
be gaps when the bus is retained but no data is transferred.
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