Agilex™ 7 M-Series Known Issue List

ID 851750
Date 9/29/2025
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.6.1. HPS EMAC RX Interface In Unresponsive State

Description

The HPS EMAC RX may become unresponsive for the following network conditions:
  • Line Rate: 1 Gbps
  • Feature: Hardware Timestamp for Precision Time Protocol (PTP) enabled.
  • Packet Types: Back-to-back (b2b) packets, multicast packets, or any packet with the least significant bit (LSB) set to '1' in the header of the next packet.
When receiving network packets with the above conditions, the EMAC interface may become blocked, as indicated by the EMAC DMA Register 5 (Status Register) (dma_grp_status at address offset 0x1014). The signature of this error is when the following bits are set in the Status Register:
  • Bit 19:17: “3'b100: SUSPEND - Suspended: Receive Descriptor Unavailable”
  • Bit 22:20: “3'b110: SUSPTX - Suspended; Transmit Descriptor Unavailable or Transmit Buffer Underflow”
  • Bit 25:23: “0 0 0: Error during Rx DMA Write Data Transfer”

The issue occurs when the status of an earlier packet has not yet been forwarded, and bit 0 of the first word of the next packet read from the Rx FIFO has a value of ‘1’. This sequence causes the internal state machine to hang.

The issue can be triggered by sending User Datagram Protocol (UDP) data packets and PTP traffic with hardware timestamping enabled on the device.

Impact

Under high traffic conditions, this issue can impact the functionality of the EMAC, potentially causing network communication disruptions.

Workaround

To mitigate this issue for a 1 Gbps line rate, Altera recommends using software-based timestamping instead of the hardware timestamp feature.

If hardware PTP is required, use a 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps line rate. For other use cases that match this error signature, try with 10 Mbps/100 Mbps line rate.

Status

Table 44.  Device Status Table
Devices Affected Planned Fix
  • AGM[B,E,F]0xxR47Axxxx
  • AGMB0xxR31Bxxxx
  • AGMF0xxR47Bxxxx
No planned fix