Rainbow Electronics AT91CAP9S250A - Manual (Page 51)

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6264A–CAP–21-May-07
AT91CAP9S500A/AT91CAP9S250A
• ARM state and Jazelle state using the BXJ instruction
All exceptions are entered, handled and exited in ARM state. If an exception occurs in Thumb or
Jazelle states, the processor reverts to ARM state. The transition back to Thumb or Jazelle
states occurs automatically on return from the exception handler.
12.3.3 Instruction Pipelines
The ARM9EJ-S core uses two kinds of pipelines to increase the speed of the flow of instructions
to the processor.
A five-stage (five clock cycles) pipeline is used for ARM and Thumb states. It consists of Fetch,
Decode, Execute, Memory and Writeback stages.
A six-stage (six clock cycles) pipeline is used for Jazelle state It consists of Fetch,
Jazelle/Decode (two clock cycles), Execute, Memory and Writeback stages.
12.3.4 Memory Access
The ARM9EJ-S core supports byte (8-bit), half-word (16-bit) and word (32-bit) access. Words
must be aligned to four-byte boundaries, half-words must be aligned to two-byte boundaries and
bytes can be placed on any byte boundary.
Because of the nature of the pipelines, it is possible for a value to be required for use before it
has been placed in the register bank by the actions of an earlier instruction. The ARM9EJ-S con-
trol logic automatically detects these cases and stalls the core or forward data.
12.3.5 Jazelle Technology
The Jazelle technology enables direct and efficient execution of Java byte codes on ARM pro-
cessors, providing high performance for the next generation of Java-powered wireless and
embedded devices.
The new Java feature of ARM9EJ-S can be described as a hardware emulation of a JVM (Java
Virtual Machine). Java mode will appear as another state: instead of executing ARM or Thumb
instructions, it executes Java byte codes. The Java byte code decoder logic implemented in
ARM9EJ-S decodes 95% of executed byte codes and turns them into ARM instructions without
any overhead, while less frequently used byte codes are broken down into optimized sequences
of ARM instructions. The hardware/software split is invisible to the programmer, invisible to the
application and invisible to the operating system. All existing ARM registers are re-used in
Jazelle state and all registers then have particular functions in this mode.
Minimum interrupt latency is maintained across both ARM state and Java state. Since byte
codes execution can be restarted, an interrupt automatically triggers the core to switch from
Java state to ARM state for the execution of the interrupt handler. This means that no special
provision has to be made for handling interrupts while executing byte codes, whether in hard-
ware or in software.
12.3.6 ARM9EJ-S Operating Modes
In all states, there are seven operation modes:
• User mode is the usual ARM program execution state. It is used for executing most
application programs
• Fast Interrupt (FIQ) mode is used for handling fast interrupts. It is suitable for high-speed data
transfer or channel process
• Interrupt (IRQ) mode is used for general-purpose interrupt handling