Design of the 21174 memory controller for DIGITAL Personal Workstations
Reinhard Schumann · 1997
This paper describes the memory controller in the 21174 application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that was developed for DIGITAL Personal Workstations powered with 21164 or 21164A Alpha microprocessors. Before discussing the major components of the memory controller, this paper presents memory performance measurements, an overview of the system, and a description of data bus sequences. It then discusses the six major sections of the memory controller, including the address decoding scheme and simultaneously active ("hot") row operation and their effect on latency and bandwidth.