On Jan 3, 2008 10:03 AM, Stefan Reinauer stepan@coresystems.de wrote:
Will this not lead to the CPU consuming cycles and becoming/staying really hot?
yeah but, hey, it should never happen. CPUs don't melt any more when you push them that hard anyway, usually they slow themselves down or in some cases reset. I don't think it's a real issue.
Also, recall that it will be doing a lot of IO, not computing pi :-)
Can't we clear the FIFO any other way and go to CPU hlt afterwards?
No, because of JTAG. I've had really terrible problems with JTAG debuggers when CPUs halt. Even a tight loop (while (1);) can be hard to break into on some CPUs. But if the CPU is in a call/return-with-IO type mode, it is pretty easy to grab it with JTAG, stop it, and debug it.
thanks
ron