This patch classifies all ports in Python as either Master or Slave
and enforces a binding of master to slave. Conceptually, a master (such
as a CPU or DMA port) issues requests, and receives responses, and
conversely, a slave (such as a memory or a PIO device) receives
requests and sends back responses. Currently there is no
differentiation between coherent and non-coherent masters and slaves.
The classification as master/slave also involves splitting the dual
role port of the bus into a master and slave port and updating all the
system assembly scripts to use the appropriate port. Similarly, the
interrupt devices have to have their int_port split into a master and
slave port. The intdev and its children have minimal changes to
facilitate the extra port.
Note that this patch does not enforce any port typing in the C++
world, it merely ensures that the Python objects have a notion of the
port roles and are connected in an appropriate manner. This check is
carried when two ports are connected, e.g. bus.master =
memory.port. The following patches will make use of the
classifications and specialise the C++ ports into masters and slaves.
This patch makes the bus bridge uni-directional and specialises the
bus ports to be a master port and a slave port. This greatly
simplifies the assumptions on both sides as either port only has to
deal with requests or responses. The following patches introduce the
notion of master and slave ports, and would not be possible without
this split of responsibilities.
In making the bridge unidirectional, the address range mechanism of
the bridge is also changed. For the cases where communication is
taking place both ways, an additional bridge is needed. This causes
issues with the existing mechanism, as the busses cannot determine
when to stop iterating the address updates from the two bridges. To
avoid this issue, and also greatly simplify the specification, the
bridge now has a fixed set of address ranges, specified at creation
time.
