Glossary
Glossary-2
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Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA)
A family of protocol specifications that describe a strategy for the interconnect. AMBA
is the ARM open standard for on-chip buses. It is an on-chip bus specification that
details a strategy for the interconnection and management of functional blocks that
make up a
System-on-Chip
(SoC). It aids in the development of embedded processors
with one or more CPUs or signal processors and multiple peripherals. AMBA
complements a reusable design methodology by defining a common backbone for SoC
modules.
Advanced Peripheral Bus (APB)
A simpler bus protocol than AXI and AHB. It is designed for use with ancillary or
general-purpose peripherals such as timers, interrupt controllers, UARTs, and I/O ports.
Connection to the main system bus is through a system-to-peripheral bus bridge that
helps to reduce system power consumption.
AHB
See
Advanced High-performance Bus.
AHB Access Port (AHB-AP)
An optional component of the DAP that provides an AHB interface to a SoC.
AHB-AP
See
AHB Access Port.
AHB-Lite
A subset of the full AMBA AHB protocol specification. It provides all of the basic
functions required by the majority of AMBA AHB slave and master designs,
particularly when used with a multi-layer AMBA interconnect. In most cases, the extra
facilities provided by a full AMBA AHB interface are implemented more efficiently by
using an AMBA AXI protocol interface.
AHB Trace Macrocell
A hardware macrocell that, when connected to a processor core, outputs data trace
information on a trace port.
Aligned
A data item stored at an address that is divisible by the number of bytes that defines the
data size is said to be aligned. Aligned words and halfwords have addresses that are
divisible by four and two respectively. The terms word-aligned and halfword-aligned
therefore stipulate addresses that are divisible by four and two respectively.
AMBA
See
Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture.
Advanced Trace Bus (ATB)
A bus used by trace devices to share CoreSight capture resources.
APB
See
Advanced Peripheral Bus.
Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)
An integrated circuit that has been designed to perform a specific application function.
It can be custom-built or mass-produced.