BCM3302 Memory Controller Configuration

This pages focus on memory controller configuration values, stored in the nvram and used for BCM3302 memory controller configuration found in the BCM4712, BCM53xx series of SoC and BCM5836 CPU

There are several references, which was used to make this summary page, including GPL source code tarballs, distributed by Linksys and ASUS and CFE distributed by Broadcom.

Memory configuration is perfromed by code, assembled from shared/sbsdram.S file. Depending on version it's either uses embedded nvram header values (found in PMON/CFE loader at offset 0x100 or 0x400) or values, from current nvram. These values are generated from sdram_* values either during bootloader flashing or via nvram update using nvram commit command.

The exact sdram configuration variables are: sdram_init, sdram_config, sdram_refresh and sdram_ncdl. They are used as following:

Sample memory configurations which could be found in the sources provided by Broadcom:

Size Type Organization sdram_init bits RAS CAS Technology
8MB SDR 4 Meg x 16 0x0002 000 1 0 A0-A11 A0-A7 64Mbit
16MB SDR 4 Meg x 16 x 2 0x0000 000 0 0 A0-A11 A0-A7 64Mbit
16MB SDR 8 Meg x 16 0x000a 010 1 0 A0-A11 A0-A8 128Mbit
32MB DDR 16 Meg x 16 0x000b 010 1 1 A0-A12 A0-A8 256Mbit
32MB SDR 16 Meg x 16 0x000a 010 1 0 A0-A12 A0-A8 256Mbit
32MB SDR 8 Meg x 16 x 2 0x0008 010 0 0 A0-A11 A0-A8 128Mbit
64MB DDR 16 Meg x 16 x 2 0x0009 010 0 1 A0-A12 A0-A8 256Mbit
64MB SDR 16 Meg x 16 x 2 0x0008 010 0 0 A0-A12 A0-A8 256Mbit
128MB DDR 32 Meg x 16 x 2 0x0011 100 0 1 A0-A12 A0-A9 512Mbit
128MB SDR 32 Meg x 16 x 2 0x0010 100 0 0 A0-A12 A0-A9 512Mbit
256MB DDR 64 Meg x 16 x 2 0x0011 100 0 1 A0-A13 A0-A9 1Gbit


oleg
Posted: 2004-12-11
Updated: 2006-11-05 -- BCM5836