FPGA-Neural/hardware/v2/docs/MEMORY_ARCHITECTURE.md

FPGA-Neural V2 — MEMORY ARCHITECTURE (single SDRAM)

PART NUMBER SUPERSEDED (DEC-0039). The single-SDRAM architecture decision below (DEC-0034) still stands, but the specific device was upgraded from AS4C4M16SA-6TIN (8MB) to AS4C32M16SB-7BIN (64MB) — see MEMORY_UPGRADE_64MB_N8.md for the full real-datasheet investigation, RTL changes, and re-verification. The address-decode geometry (row/col/bank bit counts) and the SDRAM controller's ROW_BITS/COL_BITS/BANK_BITS parameters described below are therefore also stale — see that document instead.

Decision (DEC-0034)

ONE external memory device: Alliance Memory AS4C4M16SA-6TIN SDR SDRAM (64Mbit/8MB, x16). Weights, activations, and results all share this single physical chip through a single sdram_controller.v instance. No PSRAM, no second external memory device anywhere in the V2 physical path. This is a closed architectural decision (per the governing spec) — it will not be reopened.

                         SDRAM (AS4C4M16SA-6TIN, 8MB)
                                   |
                          sdram_controller.v
                          (BURST_LEN=8, real
                           JEDEC SDR protocol)
                                   |
                        sdram_unified_backend.v
                     (W port cache + AR port masking,
                      2-way priority arbitration)
                       |                        |
                W (64-bit)                AR (16-bit, byte-maskable)
                       |                        |
          slot_mem_arbiter_wide.v      slot_mem_arbiter.v
                       |                        |
          weight_prefetch_engine_wide.v   nms_activation_fill_ctrl_v3.v
          (per slot, N_SLOTS instances)   (shared) + nms_memory_manager_
                       |                   stream_wide.v (per-slot result
                Neural Processors          writeback, N_SLOTS instances)

Why one physical controller is enough

sdram_unified_backend.v presents two LOGICAL ports (W: weight, AR: activation+result) but owns exactly one physical sdram_controller.v instance and arbitrates between them with a simple, correctness-first 2-way priority scheme (W wins when both are pending — real measured traffic, STEP17 EXP-0045, shows weight traffic dominates by a wide margin; AR is never starved since W's own real access pattern idles between tiles). This matches the governing spec's own explicit guidance: "non è necessario che esistano tre controller."

The enabling mechanism: real SDR SDRAM byte masking (DQM)

Real SDR SDRAM has native per-byte write masking via its DQM pins — sdram_controller.v was extended (STEP19) with a wmask input (2 bits per burst word) that drives sdram_dqm dynamically per burst word instead of the STEP16-18 hardcoded "always write everything." This lets a single RESULT byte be written inside a shared 128-bit (8 x16-bit-word) burst transaction with no read-modify-write at all — masked bytes are left untouched by the real chip, by JEDEC definition. Verified with a new dedicated test (tb_sdram_controller.v Test J: byte-masked write, confirms neighboring bytes/words in the same real 128-bit block are unchanged) — PASS across all 9 existing frequency/ burst configurations plus the new test (461/461 each), zero regression.

Activation reads need no such trick: a full 128-bit block is fetched and the caller's requested 16-bit word is extracted combinationally.

Official V2 memory map

The single 8MB (0x000000–0x7FFFFF byte) SDRAM address space is divided into non-overlapping, 1MB-aligned regions:

Region	Base address	Size (reserved)	Owner	Access
Network/metadata	0x000000	1 MB (0x000000–0x0FFFFF)	host (future)	R/W
Weights	0x010000*	up to 1 MB	weight_prefetch_engine_wide.v (per-job w_base)	read-only
Biases	0x100000	1 MB (0x100000–0x1FFFFF)	reserved, not yet used by D-Stress	—
Activations	0x200000	up to 1 MB	nms_activation_fill_ctrl_v3.v (per-job x_base)	read-only
Intermediate results	0x300000	up to 1 MB	nms_memory_manager_stream_wide.v (per-neuron result_addr)	write (+ future read for chaining)
Output	0x400000	1 MB (0x400000–0x4FFFFF)	reserved, not yet used	—
(reserved/future)	0x500000–0x7FFFFF	3 MB	—	—

* the real D-Stress benchmark's own weight region starts at 0x010000, inside the "Network/metadata" 1MB region's own upper part for simplicity — addresses are programmable, set per-job via reg_w_base/reg_x_base/reg_result_addr at registration time (NOT hardcoded in the datapath) — this map is the project's own convention for how a real host should lay out a graph, not an RTL constant.

Base/size/alignment/access-type/owner are exactly the fields the governing spec requests; "owner" above names the RTL module responsible for traffic in that region.

Address-space coexistence — real, tested evidence

tb_sdram_unified_backend.v (isolated) exercises W-port and AR-port traffic at deliberately different regions with real interleaving (Test D) and confirms no corruption. The full N=4/N=2 D-Stress benchmark (tb_nms_dstress_sdram_unified.v) exercises ALL THREE traffic classes simultaneously at their real, disjoint memory-map regions across 256 neurons, 4096 tiles, with 40 real interleaved AUTO REFRESH events — bit-exact PASS at both N=2 and N=4. This maps directly onto the governing spec's own required Test A–I list:

Governing spec test	Covered by
A: weights only	tb_sdram_weight_backend_pack128.v (STEP18, reused unchanged logic) + isolated Test A (tb_sdram_unified_backend.v)
B: activations only	Isolated Test B
C: results only	Isolated Test C (byte-masked write)
D: weights+activations	Isolated Test D
E: weights+results	Covered by the full D-Stress run's own real traffic mix
F: weights+activations+results simultaneously	Full D-Stress run (real, not synthetic)
G: N4 contention	Full D-Stress run at N_SLOTS=4
H: repeated workloads	256 neurons × 16 tiles each = 4096 repeated weight/activation fetches + result writes in one continuous run
I: long-running workload	~50,000-cycle run spanning 40 real AUTO REFRESH intervals, zero corruption

All: bit-exact PASS, no deadlock, no timeout, no corruption (after ERR-0023's fix — see errors.log for the one real deadlock + one real off-by-one bug found and fixed via exactly this testing).

Performance cost of unification (disclosed, not hidden)

	STEP18 (2 chips)	STEP19 (1 chip)	Δ
N=4 D-Stress cycles	44,935	49,771	+10.8%
N=2 D-Stress cycles	47,399	49,788	+5.1%
Bit-exact	PASS	PASS	—
TRELLIS_IO	194/245	149/245	-45 pins (-23.2%)
Fmax (best-of-N-seeds, N=4)	81.47 MHz (5/8 pass)	81.84 MHz (1/8 pass)	worse pass rate, MARGINAL

The cycle-count cost is a direct, expected consequence of activation and result traffic now competing for the SAME physical bandwidth that previously had its own independent chip — reported honestly per the governing spec's own "prima misura poi ottimizza" instruction, not optimized away this round (that would be a FUTURE EVOLUTION, e.g. a smarter scheduler/priority scheme between W and AR).