10 Gigabit Ethernet MAC IP Core

Arasan’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet (XGMAC) IP core is compliant with the Ethernet IEEE 802.3-2008 standard and provides an interface between AHB/AXI Bus and the 10 Gigabit Media Independent Interface (XGMII) using a powerful 64-bit Scatter Gather DMA.

The 10 Gigabit Ethernet IP core is designed for applications such as integrated networking devices, host bus adapters, PCI-Express Ethernet controllers, and Ethernet adapter cards.

The XGMAC operates at a speed of 10 Gbps in full duplex mode only. The XGMAC provides features that include transmit and receive message data encapsulation, framing, error code detection, dynamic FCS generation and calculation on frame by frame basis, automatic pad insertion and deletion to enforce minimum frame size requirements. The 10 Gigabit Ethernet XGMAC also supports flow control operation by supporting generation and decoding of PAUSE control frames and supports generation of Management frames on MDC/MDIO signals to communicate with an external PHY device.

AHB/AXI Interface and Scatter/Gather DMA

The XGMAC IP core consists of two configurable FIFOs on both transmit and receive sides to handle the application’s latency during frame transmission and reception. An AHB/AXI master and a 64-bit scatter-gather DMA transfer packets between the internal FIFOs and the host memory to enhance system performance. The XGMAC core supports the XGMII interface and a MDIO/MDC (Management Data Input/ Output and Management Data Clock) management interface provides control and management functions to external PHY devices.

The 10 Gigabit Ethernet XGMAC IP also provides enhanced programmable features for minimizing applications complexity and pre/post message processing. The XGMAC IP supports MIB, SNMP, RMON, VLAN Q-Tag frame, and Jumbo frames. It also includes dynamic generation, checking, and stripping of FCS field, and automatic pad field insertion.

Other features of the XGMAC IP includes generation and decoding of PAUSE control frames, frame boundary delimitation, frame synchronization, and error detection. See the Feature tab below for a full list of features.

Diagram

10 Gigabit Ethernet MAC

Features

General Functions

10 Gbps data transfer rates.
Operates at Independent Transmit and Receive 156.25 MHz Clocks
as defined in the Clause 46 of the IEEE 802.3-2008
Specification.
Option to operate at Independent Transmit and Receive 161.13
MHz Clock when interfacing with the XG-64B66B PCS Module.
Direct Connection to either 64-bit or 128-bit AHB or AXI
Interface Master Interface and 32-bit AHB or AXI Target
Interface
Independent 64-bit or 128-bit scatter-gather DMA for Transmit
and Receive operations.
IEEE 802.3-2008 compliant XGMII interface (Clause46) to talk
to an external PHY.
Optional demultiplexed XGMII Interface with 64-bit data and
8-bit control to interface to XG-XAUI or XG-64B66B PCS Modules
Optional VLAN Q-Tag frame Support.
Full-Duplex mode of operation while supporting PAUSE frame
based Flow Control.
Generation of Clause22 (Direct) or Clause45 (Indirect)
Compliant Management frames under software control on MDC/MDIO
interface to talk to external PHY device.
802.3 Compliant MIB, SNMP, RMON management support by using
variety of 48-bit counters.
Configurable Transmit and Receive FIFO‟s.
Support‟s Jumbo Frames during both transmit and receive
operations.
Optional Power Management Support by supporting Magic Packet
and Wake-Up Frame‟s.

HOST Interface

AMBA Compliant AHB or AXI Interface (XGMAC-AHB or XGMAC-AXI)
Bus Mastering using AHB or AXI Master Interface to transfer
packets between the Host memory and the Internal FIFO‟s and to
fetch descriptors from the Host memory.
The AHB or AXI Master Interface supports either 64-bit data
transfers or 128-bit data transfers, based on DMA operating in
64-bit or 128-bit mode.
AHB or AXI Target(Slave) Interface to program/control the
operation and program the Registers inside the Core using a
32-bit interface.

DMA Functions

64-bit or 128-bit scatter-gather DMA, Independent for Transmit
and Receive Operations.
Independent Transmit and Receive Operation.
The Transmit and Receive DMA can be configured to perform
transfers in either 64-bit mode (data bus width is 64-bit wide)
or 128-bit mode (data bus width is 128-bit wide).
Either Linked-list or Ring (Chained) Descriptors.
Programmable Skip length between the Descriptors in case of
Chained Descriptors.
Up to two buffers per Descriptor
Programmable Buffer Size (up to 1K bytes) configurable for
every descriptor.
Programmable Burst Size for efficient Host Bus utilization.
Buffer Alignment Support at Byte Level for both transmit and
receive buffers.
Flexible Transmit/Receive Arbitration.
XGMAC Functional Specification Version: 1.02
Programmable Interrupt Structure.
Big/Little Endian operation for both Data buffers and
Descriptors structure.
Transmit Functions:
Variable length (96 BT, 128 BT, 256 BT) Inter Frame Gap (IFG)
on back to back frame transmission, with default value of 96 Bit
Times of IFG.
Deficit IDLE Counter to maintain an average IFG of 96 bit
times.
Automatic generation of FCS during transmission.
Automatic generation of PAD during transmission to meet the
Ethernet MinFrameSize requirement.
Option to disable PAD and/or CRC32 insertion on transmission
on a per frame basis.

Receive Functions

Preamble detection and stripping on reception. Checks for
proper START and SFD byte lane alignment.
Handles minimum IFG of 5 Bytes during back to back frame
reception.
Flexible Address filtering modes.
Four 48-bit MAC Addresses for Perfect Address match with
individual address enable/disable.
Inverse Address filtering enable on the above four 48-bit MAC
addresses.
64-bit Hash table to filter multicast addresses.
Promiscuous mode of operation.
Reception of broadcast frames.
Automatic checking of the FCS field for correct CRC value.
Automatic checking of Runt frames and option to filter them
out from the Application.
Automatic checking of the DATA field length in case of 802.3
type frames with length field.
Configurable field to detect MaxFrameLen frames.
Automatic adjustment to the MaxFrameLen field for VLAN Tagged
frames.
Detection of Receive Error indication on XGMII interface
during Frame reception.
Comprehensive 32-bit Status information provided on each
receive frame.

Flow Control Functions

Software controlled PAUSE control frame generation with
programmable pause quanta.
Option to generate PAUSE control frames on FIFO Almost-Full
and FIFO Almost-Empty conditions (under controls from
Application).
Option to use reserved multicast address or programmed unicast
address in the DA field of the PAUSE Control frame.
Generation of the PAUSE control frame even when the Transmit
logic is in pause mode.
Automatic detection of PAUSE frames with DA field of either
the reserved multicast address or the unicast MAC Address(s) of
the device.
Checking for valid OPCODE, frame size, and FCS field in the
PAUSE Control frames.
Disabling of the Transmitter for the length of time mentioned
in the pause quanta field in the received PAUSE Frame.
Option to block the PAUSE frames received from transferring to
Application.

Benefits

Fully IEEE 802.3-2008 compliant core
Premier direct support from Arasan IP core designers
Easy-to-use industry standard test environment
Unencrypted source code allows easy implementation
Reuse Methodology Manual guidelines (RMM) compliant verilog code ensured using Spyglass

Deliverables