eCos Reference Manual
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# HAL I/O

This section contains definitions for supporting access to device control registers in an architecture neutral fashion.

These definitions are normally found in the header file `cyg/hal/hal_io.h`. This file itself contains macros that are generic to the architecture. If there are variant or platform specific IO access macros then these will be found in `cyg/hal/var_io.h` and `cyg/hal/plf_io.h` in the variant or platform HALs respectively. These files are include automatically by this header, so need not be included explicitly.

This header (or more likely `cyg/hal/plf_io.h`) also defines the PCI access macros. For more information on these see the eCos PCI library reference documentation.

## Register address

    HAL_IO_REGISTER

This type is used to store the address of an I/O register. It will normally be a memory address, an integer port address or an offset into an I/O space. More complex architectures may need to code an address space plus offset pair into a single word, or may represent it as a structure.

Values of variables and constants of this type will usually be supplied by configuration mechanisms or in target specific headers.

## Register read

    HAL_READ_XXX( register, value )
    HAL_READ_XXX_VECTOR( register, buffer, count, stride )

These macros support the reading of I/O registers in various sizes. The XXX component of the name may be UINT8, UINT16, UINT32.

`HAL_READ_XXX()` reads the appropriately sized value from the register and stores it in the variable passed as the second argument.

`HAL_READ_XXX_VECTOR()` reads count values of the appropriate size into buffer. The stride controls how the pointer advances through the register space. A stride of zero will read the same register repeatedly, and a stride of one will read adjacent registers of the given size. Greater strides will step by larger amounts, to allow for sparsely mapped registers for example.

## Register write

    HAL_WRITE_XXX( register, value )
    HAL_WRITE_XXX_VECTOR( register, buffer,count, stride )

These macros support the writing of I/O registers in various sizes. The XXX component of the name may be UINT8, UINT16, UINT32.

`HAL_WRITE_XXX()` writes the appropriately sized value from the variable passed as the second argument stored it in the register.

`HAL_WRITE_XXX_VECTOR()` writes count values of the appropriate size from buffer. The stride controls how the pointer advances through the register space. A stride of zero will write the same register repeatedly, and a stride of one will write adjacent registers of the given size. Greater strides will step by larger amounts, to allow for sparsely mapped registers for example.

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