
Operations
Bank/Row Activation
A48P4616
Preliminary (September, 2005, Version 0.0)
15
AMIC Technology, Corp.
Before any Read or Write commands can be issued to a
bank within the DDR SDRAM, a row in that bank must be
“opened” (activated). This is accomplished via the Active
command and addresses A0-A12, BA0 and BA1 (see
Activating a Specific Row in a Specific Bank), which decode
and select both the bank and the row to be activated. After
opening a row (issuing an Active command), a Read or Write
command may be issued to that row, subject to the t
RCD
specification. A subsequent Active command to a different
row in the same bank can only be issued after the previous
active row has been “closed” (precharged). The minimum
time interval between successive Active commands to the
same bank is defined by t
RC
. A subsequent Active command
to another bank can be issued while the first bank is being
accessed, which results in a reduction of total row-access
overhead. The minimum time interval between successive
Active commands to different banks is defined by t
RRD
.
Reads
Subsequent to programming the mode register with CAS
latency, burst type, and burst length, Read bursts are
initiated with a Read command.
The starting column and bank addresses are provided with
the Read command and Auto Precharge is either enabled or
disabled for that burst access. If Auto Precharge is enabled,
the row that is accessed starts precharge at the completion
of the burst, provided t
RAS
has been satisfied. For the generic
Read commands used in the following illustrations, Auto
Precharge is disabled.
During Read bursts, the valid data-out element from the
starting column address is available following the CAS
latency after the Read command. Each subsequent data-out
element is valid nominally at the next positive or negative
clock edge (i.e. at the next crossing of CK and CK). The
following timing figure entitled “Read Burst: CAS Latencies
(Burst Length=4)” illustrates the general timing for each
supported CAS latency setting. DQS is driven by the DDR
SDRAM along with output data. The initial low state on DQS
is known as the read preamble; the low state coincident with
the last data-out element is known as the read postamble.
Upon completion of a burst, assuming no other commands
have been initiated, the DQ
S
and DQ
S
goes High-Z. Data
from any Read burst may be concatenated with or truncated
with data from a subsequent Read command. In either case,
a continuous flow of data can be maintained. The first data
element from the new burst follows either the last element of
a completed burst or the last desired data element of a
longer burst which is being truncated. The new Read
command should be issued x cycles after the first Read
command, where x equals the number of desired data
element pairs (pairs are required by the 2n prefetch
architecture). This is shown in timing figure entitled
“Consecutive Read Bursts: CAS Latencies (Burst Length =4
or 8)”. A Read command can be initiated on any positive
clock
cycle
following
a
Nonconsecutive Read data is shown in timing figure entitled
“Non-Consecutive Read Bursts: CAS Latencies (Burst
Length = 4)”. Full-speed Random Read Accesses: CAS
Latencies (Burst Length = 2, 4 or 8) within a page (or pages)
can be performed as shown on page 20.
previous
Read
command.
Activating a Specific Row in a Specific Bank