Hello there, I have a query for the more knowledgeable than me.. We've been playing quite successfully with 1 gig Ethernet in our labs that we're getting bold and want to move to 10Gig.
I was wondering if anyone else had experience of the various phy layer transceivers that are available. We're about to sign the NDA's for Marvell, Vitesse and Broadcom (if they ever get back to me....) so we can get details on the various chips. But helpful hints from anyone here would be nice..
The 10gig side will probably be an XFP interface cage, as we have a couple of 10gig PCIexpress NICs that use those. Stealing an XPF fibre module from that side of the lab is the easy part *wink*
I saw a powerpoint with info on the Xilinx RocketPHY chip, does that still exist?? The links I tried all refused to work..
Our current board (Virtex4FX60 based, it has PCIexpress connector for going into an 8lane socket, and also has a 4lane socket on it for adding additional PCIexpress cards to it. ) has a nice samtec connector array with at least 20 TX and 20 RX pairs on it which we're thinking of using for the XSBI style interface, it has also got a fair number of single ended connections for the slower management stuff as well.
We also have available 4 rocket IOs, however these come out via the top PCIexpress motherboard style socket on the board. Our friendly pcb designer laughs at the prospect of doing XAUI over those. It's the kind of laugh that says "go away you firmware man and bother me not with such crazy ideas" I am guessing he's probably correct?
Also, anyone played/experienced the Xilinx 10Gig MAC IPCore?
Before anyone asks, we're not building a NIC, but a novel high energy physics R&D project for a DAQ system..
Cheers...