Functional Description

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5.1.2System Bus Interrupt Delivery

The Pentium 4 processor supports the system bus interrupt delivery; the APIC serial bus interrupt delivery mechanism is not supported. Interrupt-related messages are encoded on the system bus as “Interrupt Message Transactions”. In an 845 chipset platform, system bus interrupts can originate from the processor on the system bus, or from a downstream device on the hub interface or AGP. In the later case the MCH drives the “Interrupt Message Transaction” onto the system bus.

In an 845 chipset platform, the ICH2 contains IOxAPICs, and its interrupts are generated as upstream hub interface memory writes. Furthermore, PCI 2.2 defines MSIs (Message Signaled Interrupts) that are also in the form of memory writes. A PCI 2.2 device can generate an interrupt as an MSI cycle on it’s PCI bus, instead of asserting a hardware signal to the IOxAPIC. The MSI can be directed to the IOxAPIC, which in turn generates an interrupt as an upstream hub interface memory write. Alternatively, the MSI can be directed directly to the system bus. The target of a MSI is dependent on the address of the interrupt memory write. The MCH forwards inbound hub interface and AGP (PCI semantic only) memory writes to address 0FEEx_xxxxh, to the system bus as “Interrupt Message Transactions”.

5.1.3Upstream Interrupt Messages

The MCH accepts message-based interrupts from AGP (PCI semantics only) or its hub interface and forwards them to the system bus as Interrupt Message Transactions. The interrupt messages presented to the MCH are in the form of memory writes to address 0FEEx_xxxxh. At the hub interface or AGP interface, the memory write interrupt message is treated like any other memory write; it is either posted to the inbound data buffer (if space is available) or retried (if data buffer space is not immediately available). Once posted, the memory write from AGP or the hub interface to address 0FEEx_xxxxh is decoded as a cycle that needs to be propagated by the MCH to the system bus as an Interrupt Message Transaction.

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Intel® 82845 MCH for SDR Datasheet

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Intel 845 manual System Bus Interrupt Delivery, Upstream Interrupt Messages