Intel 41210 manual PCI Arbitration, Interrupt Routing for Devices Behind a Bridge

PCI-X Layout Guidelines

Note: PCI Express Assert_INTx/Deassert_INTx messages are not inhibited by the BME bit.

8.1.1Interrupt Routing for Devices Behind a Bridge

Given the legacy interrupt sharing scheme shown in Table 4, to get the best legacy interrupt performance (by reducing interrupt sharing), adapter boards have to select the appropriate A_INTX#, B_INTX# (where X is A, B, C or D) input pin to use on each PCI bus segment. The chosen interrupt input also imposes a PCI device number requirement for the interrupt source as specified in the PCI-to-PCI Bridge specification and reproduced in Table 5.

Table 5. Interrupt Binding for Devices Behind a Bridge

Device Number on	Interrupt Pin on Device	Interrupt on 41210 Bridge
Secondary Bus
	INTA#	INTA#
-a. 4, 8b, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28	INTB#	INTB#
	INTC#	INTC#
	INTD#	INTD#
	INTA#	INTB#
1, 5, 9b, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29	INTB#	INTC#
	INTC#	INTD#
	INTD#	INTA#
	INTA#	INTC#
2, 6, 10b, 14, 18, 22, 26, 30	INTB#	INTD#
	INTC#	INTA#
	INTD#	INTB#
	INTA#	INTD#
3, 7, 11b, 15, 19, 23, 27, 31	INTB#	INTA#
	INTC#	INTB#
	INTD#	INTC#

a.Device number 0 is reserved for the Bridge and should not be assigned to secondary devices.

b.AD[27:24] which correspond to devices 11:8 should not be used for IDSEL# connections as these signals are used when accessing the extended configuration space in the bridge from the secondary bus.

8.2PCI Arbitration

The 41210 Bridge supports a high-performance internal PCI arbiter that supports up to seven masters on each PCI segment A and B PCI Buses. The request inputs into the internal arbiter include: six external request inputs and 1 internal request input. All request inputs to the internal arbiter are split into two groups, a high priority group and a low priority group. Any master, including the internal master, can be programmed to be in either of the two groups. This could also mean that all the request inputs into the arbiter could be in one single group. Within a group, priority is round-robin. The entire low-priority group represents one slot in the high priority group. The 41210 Bridge provides a 16-bit arbiter control register to control two aspects of the internal arbiter behavior:

32 Intel® 41210 Serial to Parallel PCI Bridge Design Guide