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3.0 Functional Description
3.4 Segmentation Coprocessor
Bt8230
ATM Segmentation and Reassembly Controller—SAR
N8230DS1F
eral VCCs attempt to transmit during the same cell slot, they are sent in the same
order as the last transmission for each VCC. The segmentation coprocessor will
send cells for a VCC at intervals longer than the I parameter for the VCC for one
of two reasons: 1) multiple VCCs attempted to send a cell during the same cell
slot or 2) the I parameter is set to a fractional number of cells and the segmenta-
tion coprocessor transmits the VCC on the next cell slot boundary. In either case,
the segmentation coprocessor will decrease the cell interval for subsequent cells
to maintain an average cell interval of I. The amount that a cell interval may be
decreased is determined by the L parameter.
The segmentation coprocessor will never send traffic that would violate
GCRA (I, L). The slowest rate that can be configured is 1/(MAXI –ACT_VBR)
where ACT_VBR is the number of actively segmenting VBR channels. The
MAXI[1,0] field is in the Segmentation Control Register [SEG_CTRL; 0x20].
For GCRA-only traffic, the MAXPND[1,0] field in the SEG_CTRL register
should be set to 00. See section 3.6.2.4.1 of the ATM Forum UNI Specification,
Version 3.1 for further details on GCRA.
NOTE:
The GCRA, according to UNI 3.1, is used to define the relationship
between Peak Cell Rate (PCR) and the Cell Delay Variation Tolerance
(CDVT). The PCR specifies an upper bound on traffic submitted on an
ATM connection. The signaling message, according to ITU Recommenda-
tion I.371, defines PCR as cells-per-second in a floating point number with
a 9-bit mantissa and a 5-bit exponent.
Since the I value is given in cell slot intervals, the PCR must be con-
verted from cells per second to cell slot intervals. For example:
x = PCR (cells-per-second)
y = maximum payload throughput (cells-per-second)
I (cell-slot-interval) = y / x
The I.371 recommendation also specifies that there are 16,384 possible
values for the floating point number (derived from the 14 bits that make up
the floating point number). There must be less than a .19% difference
between adjacent values (granularity).
An example of the VBR setup follows:
Desired Configuration
line rate = STS-3c transport (155.52 Mbps)
desired channel throughput = 10 Mbps
desired maximum burst size = 3 cells
MAXI_schedule_size = 16384 since SEG_CTRL(MAXI) = 11
ACT_VBR = 1000 (This is the number of actively segmenting VBR
channels, not necessarily the total number of VBR channels configured.)
I Parameter Calculation
STS-3c payload throughput = 260/270 payload octets x 155.52 Mbps =
149.76 Mbps
I = 149.76 Mbps / 10 Mbps = 14.976
NOTE:
This means that on average, one out of every 14.976 cells will contain pay-
load information for this channel.