Products
Embedded & Communications
Processors
Chipsets
Development Kits
Solid-State Drives and Caching
Storage
Ethernet Controllers
Desktop Adapters
Server Adapters
Wireless Networking
Home  ›  Products  ›  Networking & Communications  ›  Ethernet  82546GB
Intel® 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Overview
Features and Benfits | Key Applications

Intel® 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Order Code:FW82546GB
The Intelligent Way to Connect

  • Dual port single-chip configuration simplifies designs
  • Footprint compatibility for flexible designs
  • Enhanced manageability and system health monitoring with ASF 1.0 and SMBus 2.0

The Intel® 82546GB Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller incorporates two full Gigabit Ethernet MAC and PHY layer functions and Serializer/ Deserializer (SerDes) on a single, compact component. Packaged in a 21x21mm PBGA, the 82546GB Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller provides dual port functionality without requiring additional board space for the component.

The Intel 82546GB integrates Intel's fourth-generation Gigabit MAC design, with fully integrated, physical-layer circuitry, to provide two standard IEEE 802.3 Ethernet interfaces for 1000BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, and 10BASE-T applications (802.3, 802.3u, 802.3ab). For Ethernet on the backplane and fiber-optic applications, the Intel 82546GB's two integrated SerDes support 1000BASE-X (802.3z). In addition, the controller provides a single, direct Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) 2.3 and PCI-X 1.0a compliant bus that operates as a single multi-function device on the bus at clock frequencies up to 133MHz.

The Intel 82546GB on-board SMBus port enables enhanced manageability and system health monitoring via the LAN. With SMBus, management packets can be routed to or from a management processor. The SMBus port enables industry standards such as IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) to be implemented with the 82546GB. In addition, ASF 1.0 (Alert Standard Format) circuitry provides alerting and remote-control capabilities with standardized interfaces.

The Intel 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller architecture is optimized to deliver both high-performance networking and PCI/PCI-X bus efficiency. Using state logic design with a pipelined DMA Unit and 128-bit-wide buses for the fastest performance, the 82546GB controller handles Gigabit Ethernet traffic with low network latency and minimal internal processing overhead. The controller's architecture includes independent transmit and receive queues to limit PCI bus traffic, and a PCI interface that maximizes the use of bursts for efficient bus usage. The Intel 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller prefetches up to 64 packet descriptors in a single burst for efficient PCI-bandwidth usage. Two 64KB on-chip packet buffers maintain superior performance as available PCI bandwidth changes. Advanced interrupt moderation hardware manages interrupts generated by the 82546GB controller to further improve system efficiency. In addition, using hardware acceleration, the controller also offloads tasks from the host processor, such as TCP/UDP/IP checksum calculations and TCP segmentation.
Features and Benefits
PCI/PCI-X Features
133MHz PCI-X bus Supports bandwidth to allow wire-speed performance of two Gigabit Ethernet connections
Multi-function PCI device Lowest latency solution - a PCI/PCI-X bridge component is not required to implement a dual port design
PCI revision 2.3, 32/64-bit, 33/66MHz
Application flexibility in LOM or embedded use
64-bit addressing for systems with more than 4GB of physical memory
Gigabit MAC/PHY/SerDes Advanced Features
64KB configurable RX and TX packet FIFOs per port
No external FIFO memory requirements
FIFO size tunable to the application
IEEE 802.3x compliant flow control support with software controllable thresholds Reduced frame loss due to receive FIFO overrun
Caches up to 64 packet descriptors in a single burst Efficient PCI-bandwidth usage
Interrupt moderation controls
Reduces the number of interrupts generated by receive and transmit operations
Improves throughput performance and CPU utilization
Jumbo frame support up to 16KB High throughput for large data transfers on networks supporting jumbo frames
IEEE 802.1Q VLAN support with VLAN tag insertion and stripping and packet filtering for up to 4096 VLAN tags Enables IT staff to easily create multiple virtual LAN segments
State-of-the-art DSP architecture implements digital adaptive equalization, echo, cross-talk and baseline wander cancellation Robust 1000Mb/s performance in noisy environments and despite severe cable installation problems
PHY detects polarity, MDI-X, 2 pair vs. 4 pair and 3 pair vs. 4 pair cables Easier network installation and maintenance
Dual integrated Serializer-Deserializers (SerDes) PICMG 3.1 compliant Solution for server blade backplane connections and Fiber Gigabit Ethernet
Host Offloading Features
Transmit TCP segmentation, and IP, TCP, and UDP checksum off-loading capabilities on RX and TX Increased throughput and lower CPU utilization. Compatible with large send offload feature found in Windows* 2000 and Windows* XP
Advanced packet filtering
16 exact matched (unicast or multicast)
Promiscuous (unicast/multicast) transfer mode
Manageability Features (available on both ports)
On-chip SMBus 2.0 port Enables IPMI, and ASF implementations
ASF 1.0 Provides alerting and remote-control capabilities with standardized interfaces
Compliance with PCI Power Management v1.1/ACPI v2.0 Enables IPMI, and ASF implementations
Wake on LAN (WoL) support Packet recognition and wakeup for network adapter and LOM applications
Automatic link speed switching from 1000Mb/s down to 10 or 100Mb/s in standby
Low power in standby states
Supports power-down states without software assistance
Additional Features
Four programmable LED outputs ID on each port
Indications for link speed, activity, duplex, collisions, pause by flow control, PCI speed, PCI width, and port ID on each port
Allows design customization without affecting software drivers
On-chip power regulator control circuitry Simplified power supply design

Key Applications
The Intel 82546GB Gigabit Ethernet Controller is designed for use in the following applications:

LAN on Motherboard (LOM) in dense, space-constrained systems such as rack-mounted servers and high-density blade servers
Communications platform using dual Gigabit Ethernet on the backplane (PICMG 3.1 compliant or 1000BASE-X)
Internet infrastructure devices with high-speed requirements and limited board real estate, such as switches, routers and load balancers
Back to Top