Intel® IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors—Intel XScale® Processor
Intel® IXP42X Product Line of Network Processors and IXC1100 Control Plane Processor
DM September 2006
156 Order Number: 252480-006US
3.8.3.4.4 Data Aborts
Two types of data aborts exist in the Intel XScale processor: precise and imprecise. A
precise data abort is defined as one where R14_ABORT always contains the PC (+8) of
the instruction that caused the exception. An imprecise abort is one where R14_ABORT
contains the PC (+4) of the next instruction to execute and not the address of the
instruction that caused the abort. In other words, instruction execution will have
advanced beyond the instruction that caused the data abort.
On the Intel XScale processor precise data aborts are recoverable and imprecise data
aborts are not recoverable.
Precise Data Aborts
A lock abort is a precise data abort; the extended Status field of the Fault Status
Register is set to 0xb10100. This abort occurs when a lock operation directed to the
MMU (instruction or data) or instruction cache causes an exception, due to either a
translation fault, access permission fault or external bus fault.
The Fault Address Register is undefined and R14_ABORT is the address of the
aborted instruction + 8.
A data MMU abort is precise. These are due to an alignment fault, translation fault,
domain fault, permission fault or external data abort on an MMU translation. The
status field is set to a predetermined ARM definition which is shown in Tabl e 75.
The Fault Address Register is set to the effective data address of the instruction and
R14_ABORT is the address of the aborted instruction + 8.
Table 74. Processors’ Encoding of Fault Status for Prefetch Aborts
Priority Sources FS[10,3:0]*Domain FAR
Highest
Instruction MMU Exception
Several exceptions can generate this encoding:
- translation faults
- domain faults, and
- permission faults
It is up to software to figure out which one occurred.
0b10000 invalid invalid
External Instruction Error Exception
This exception occurs when the external memory system
reports an error on an instruction cache fetch. 0b10110 invalid invalid
Lowest Instruction Cache Parity Error Exception 0b11000 invalid invalid
Note: All other encodings not listed in the table are reserved.
Table 75. Intel XScale® Processor Encoding of Fault Status for Data Aborts (Sheet 1 of 2)
Priorit
ySources FS[10,3:0]*Domain FAR
Highest Alignment 0b000x1 invalid valid
External Abort on Translation First level
Second level 0b01100
0b01110 invalid
valid valid
valid
Translation Section
Page 0b00101
0b00111 invalid
valid valid
valid
Domain Section
Page 0b01001
0b01011 valid
valid valid
valid
Permission Section
Page 0b01101
0b01111 valid
valid valid
valid
Note: All other encodings not listed in the table are reserved.