Denali DDR PHY IP for TSMC

Today’s consumers generate and consume large volumes of data and video, exploding the need for data-intensive processing requiring high memory bandwidth. The Cadence Denali DDR IP is a family of high-speed on-chip interfaces to external memories, supporting their high-performance requirements with products that are optimized for each application’s needs.

The latest Denali high-speed DDR PHY IP is comprised of architectural improvements to its highly successful predecessor, achieving breakthrough performance, lower power consumption, and smaller overall area. The application-optimized DDR PHY IP can achieve speeds up to 4266Mbps. Low-power features include the addition of VDD low-power idle state in the PHY, and power-efficient clocking during low-speed operation for longer battery life and greener operation. Redesigned I/O elements reduce the overall area by up to 20%.

The DDR PHY IP is developed by experienced teams with industry-leading domain expertise and is extensively validated with multiple hardware platforms. It is engineered to quickly and easily integrate into SoC and is verified with the Denali controller IP for DDR as part of a complete memory subsystem solution. The Denali DDR PHY IP is designed to connect seamlessly and work with a third-party DFI-compliant memory controller.

The DDR PHY IP consists of a DFI interface to the memory controller, external register interface (configuration and test), PHY control block (initialization and calibration logic), and configurable data slices.

The DDR PHY IP is a high-performance DQS-delay architecture that uses programmable clock delay lines to align write data, read data capture, and provide DQS gating from the I/O pads across the DFI interface to the memory controller

To optimize the DDR interface the implementation, the DDR PHY IP provides complete flexibility with process, library, floorplan, I/O pitch, packaging, metal stack up, routing, and other physical parameters.

The DDR PHY IP is implemented with a slice-based architecture that supports a wide range of memory classes and data rates.

The data slice is an 8-bit wide design that interfaces to the DQ, DM, and DQS connections of the DRAM. The data slice is duplicated to create the appropriate data width, allowing flexibility to adjust to meet the requirements of the systems or applications.

The Address and Address/Control slices interface to the control, command, and address connections of the DRAM. The Address and Address/Control slices are duplicated to create the appropriate width for different protocols or combination of protocols, allowing flexibility to adjust the number of controls, commands, and address signals as needed.

The external register interface is a Cadence-proprietary interface to access the data slice registers.