The GRSPW2 core implements a SpaceWire link controller with RMAP support and AMBA host interface. The core complies to the SpaceWire standard (ECSS-E-ST-50-12C) with the protocol identification extension (ECSS-E-ST-50-51C) and RMAP protocol (ECSS-E-ST-50-52C). Receive and transmit data is autonomously transferred between the SpaceWire Codec and the AMBA AHB bus using DMA transfers. Through the use of receive and transmit descriptors, multiple SpaceWire packets can be received and transmitted without CPU involvement. The GRSPW2 control registers are accessed through an APB interface. For critical space applications, a fault-tolerant (FT) version of GRSPW2 is available with full SEU protection of all RAM blocks. 

• GRSPW2 User's Manual
• GRSPW2 Product Sheet

New features

GRSPW2 is the successor to the GRSPW. It is based on the old core and contains all of its functionality and features while also adding new ones. The major differences are shown in the table below.

• GRPSW2 implements RMAP error code 12 (Invalid destination logical address) which is the only part missing in GRSPW (not making it draft F compliant).
• The clock factor is the largest difference in clock frequency between the AHB clock and the SpaceWire clock. GRSPW2 has doubled this factor.
• Up to four DMA channels can be implemented in GRSPW2 while the old core only supports one.
• The GRSPW required configuration of the disconnect and 6.4 us timers since they used the system clock. The new core uses the SpaceWire transmit clock which makes that extra configuration step unnecessary.
• GRSPW2 supports separate logical addresses for each DMA channel with a corresponding mask that can be used to disable individual bits during address comparison effectively creating address ranges.

Area and timing

Estimation of the resource utilization for the GRSPW2 can be found here:

• Excel sheet for SoC area estimation

Features

• Full implementation of SpacewWire standard
• Protocol ID extension ECSS-E-50-11
• Optional RMAP protocol ECSS-E-50-11
• AMBA AHB back-end with DMA
• Descriptor-based autonomous multi-packet transfer
• Low area and high frequency
• SEU protection fault-tolerance
• Portable

Benefits

• Tested and verified against several other SpaceWire cores
• Low area and high frequency
• Easily portable between FPGA and ASIC
• Low-cost project license
• SEU protection of all RAM blocks

Deliverables

• FPGA/ASIC netlist
• Stand-alone testbench
• Optional plug and play interface for GRLIB IP library
• User's manual
• Driver for RTEMS and VxWorks