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AR# 38696 MIG Spartan-6 - Use of FPGA Suspend Mode and Self-Refresh Resets MCB

The Spartan-6 family offers the suspend mode, an advanced static power-management feature, which reduces FPGA power consumption while retaining the FPGA's configuration data and maintaining the design. To use the Spartan-6 FPGA suspend mode in a MIG designwith DRAM data retention, the user has to request that the memory enter self-refresh mode before entering suspend. Once the FPGA exits suspend mode and the PLLs have locked, thememory can exit self-refresh mode and MCB operation can resume with no loss of DRAM data.

There is an issue with MIG 3.6 and earlier versions where the MCB is reset when coming out of a self-refresh and potentially corrupts the data in the DRAM.
InMIG 3.6 and earlier versions when self-refresh mode is used with the FPGA suspend feature, the MCB is reset resulting in corruption of DRAM data. This is caused bythe LOCK signalof the PLL going low during a suspend operation. Thesoft calibration module incorrectly resets the MCB when the PLL lock signal is initially low after the FPGA exits the suspend mode. Thereset to the MCB will cause a power-up calibration, which writes to the address specified inC_MC_CALIBRATION_RA,C_MC_CALIBRATION_BA,C_MC_CALIBRATION_CA, overwriting the previous content.This behavior is only seen in Suspend/self-refresh mode and not in self-refresh only mode.

The expected behavior is for the FPGA to come out of suspend modeand the DRAM to exit self-refresh mode without the MCB entering the power-up calibration sequence.Xilinx has determined the root cause for this issue and is making the necessary changes to MIG.

To work around this issue, rtl updates to themcb_raw_wrapper.v/vhd and mcb_soft_calibration.v/.vhd files are required. These files are located in both the 'user_design/rtl' and 'example_design/rtl' directories. The following ftp location contains the updated files that should be used over those generated by MIG v3.6: http://www.xilinx.com/txpatches/pub/swhelp/coregen/38696.zip

This issue only exists in MIG v3.6 and earlier versions and is resolved in MIG v3.7 which will be released with ISE 13.1 software.

If you are experiencing this issue and additional help is required, please open a webcase.

Master Answer Records

Answer Number Answer Title Version Found Version Resolved
37173 MIG v3.6 - Release Notes and Known Issues for ISE Design Suite 12.3 N/A N/A

Associated Answer Records

Answer Number Answer Title Version Found Version Resolved
38951 MIG v3.61 - Release Notes and Known Issues for ISE Design Suite 12.4-14.2 N/A N/A
AR# 38696
Date Created 10/28/2010
Last Updated 12/15/2012
Status Active
Type General Article
Devices
  • Spartan-6 LX
  • Spartan-6 LXT
Tools
  • ISE Design Suite - 12.3
  • ISE Design Suite - 12.2
  • ISE Design Suite - 12.1
IP
  • MIG
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