Creating the DMA list

Each transfer element in the DMA list contains a transfer size, the low half of an effective address, and a stall-and-notify bit that can be used to suspend list execution after transferring a list element whose stall-and-notify bit is set.

Each DMA transfer specified in a list can transfer up to 16 KB of data, and the list can have up to 2,048 (2 K) transfer elements.

Software creates the list and stores it in the LS. Lists must be stored in the LS on an 8-byte boundary. The form of a transfer element is {LTS, EAL}.

The first word (LTS) is the list transfer size, the most-significant bit of which serves as an optional stall-and-notify flag.
The second word (EAL) is the low-order 32-bits of an EA.

Transfer elements are processed sequentially, in the order they are stored. If the stall-and-notify flag is set for a transfer element, the MFC will stop processing the DMA list after performing the transfer for that element until the SPE program clears the DMA List Command Stall-And-Notify Event from the SPU Read Event Status Channel. This gives programs an opportunity to modify subsequent transfer elements before they are processed by the MFC.