DMA
The microprocessor
is
supported by a set of high-function support
devices providing four channels of 20-bit direct-memory access
(DMA), three 16-bit timer/counter channels, and eight
prioritized interrupt levels.
Three of the four
DMA
channels are available on the
I/O
bus and
support high-speed data transfers between
I/O
devices and
memory without microprocessor intervention. The fourth
DMA
channel
is
programmed to refresh the system's dynamic memory.
This
is
done by programming a channel of the timer/counter
device to periodically request a dummy
DMA
transfer. This
action creates a memory-read cycle, which
is
available to refresh
dynamic memory
both
on
the system board and in the system
expansion slots.
DMA
data transfers take five clock cycles of
210ns,
or
1.05j.ts. (See
I/O
CH
RDY on page 1-22.) Refresh
cycles occur once every 72 clocks (approximately
15j.ts)
and
require four clocks or approximately
5.6%
of the bus bandwidth.
The following formula determines the percentage of bandwidth
used for refresh.
64K
X 1
%
Bandwidth used
4 cycles
X
128
512
for
Refresh
--------------
5.6%
1.93ms/210ns
9190
256K
X 1
%
Bandwidth used
4 cycles
X
256
1024
for Refresh
--------------
5.6%
3.86ms/210ns
19048
1-14 System Board