Single-Port Triple-Speed Ethernet On-Board PHY Chip Reference Design

Recommended for

  • Device: Stratix® IV GX

  • Device: Arria® II GX

  • Quartus®: Unknown

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Overview

Single-Port Triple-Speed Ethernet On-Board PHY Chip datapath reference design provides a simple and quick way to implement your own Ethernet-based design in an Intel® FPGA. The reference design also observes live network traffic flowing through a loop-back Ethernet cable or a Gbps Ethernet switch. This design also helps you to verify your Ethernet-based system operation with an Intel University of New Hampshire (UNH) verified Triple Speed Ethernet function and a standard off-the-shelf Ethernet PHY device. You can leverage this design to build your own Ethernet system with low risk and minimal effort.

The reference design is built with Intel® Qsys using one instances of the Triple-Speed Ethernet MegaCore® function in a Stratix® IV GX or Arria® II GX FPGA with on-board Marvell 88E1111 PHY chips. This reference design demonstrates the operation of the Triple-Speed Ethernet MegaCore® function up to the maximum wire-speed performance in loop-back hardware configuration.

Features

  • Require minimal hardware for a complete test.
  • Implement one instance of the Triple-Speed Ethernet intellectual property (IP) core and support 10/100/1000- megabits per second (Mbps) Ethernet operations in the following modes:
    • RGMII mode on the Arria® II GX design
    • SGMII mode with auto-negotiation on the Stratix® IV GX design
  • ​Support programmable test parameters such as number of packets, packet length, source and destination media access control (MAC) addresses, and payload-data type.
  • Support testing with sequential random bursts, which enables the configuration of each burst for the number of packets, payload-data type, and payload size. A pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS) generator generates the payload data type in fixed incremental values or in a random sequence.
  • Demonstrate transmission and reception of Ethernet packets through internal loopback path at the maximum theoretical data rates without errors.
  • Include support for gathering throughput statistics.
  • Supports System Console user interface. This user interface, which is based on Tcl, allows you to dynamically configure, debug, and test the reference designs.

Demonstrated Intel® Technology

  • Stratix® IV GX FPGAs
  • Arria II® GX FPGAs
  • Triple-Speed Ethernet MegaCore® function
  • Platform Designer
  • Avalon® system interconnect fabric

Figure 1. Single-Port Triple-Speed Ethernet On-Board PHY Chip Reference Design