Zero-relative addressing

During a memory operation within M/BE SoC, a memory address will be used to locate
data in memory or in device-register address space. Unlike with typical memory addressing
found in the usual chips, M/BE utilizes a concept known as Zero-Relative Addressing (ZRA).

ZRA allows all devices and memory regions to be addressed with an offset relative to zero. This
allows mitigation and reduction of address fragmentation as well as overlapping memory regions
among other things.

( How does it work? )

A physical address is a true memory address that references a location within an
address space. Unlike with typical architectures where addresses are truly linear,
M/BE encodes physical addresses as such:

    31:29     28:24         23:0
+--------+--------+--------+
|   Rsvd     | Region  | Offset   |
+--------+--------+--------+
                          \                     \
           NoC node ID       Offset

M/BE is to implement a Network-on-Chip (NoC) structured in a way such that the region
identifier equates to the NoC endpoint/node ID.


Revision #1
Created 2026-05-05 04:20:23 UTC by Chloe
Updated 2026-05-05 04:22:20 UTC by Chloe