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FPGA+Ethernet

Hi all,

I want to add an Ethernet interface to my FPGA board for data transmission. But I'm not sure which scheme I should use.

A) There's a PHY on the FPGA board, but I don't have much knowledge or experience on MAC. The protocol seems complicated and not easy to implement in a short time. Is it possible to develop a small and simple MAC? My idea is packing data to form a standard TCP or UDP packet and using the PHY to send out or receive it. Another reason I don't want using a full MAC is it costs too much resources (~2000 slices). If I use MicroBlaze+OPB MAC, I can't afford the license fee.

B) Using another external Ethernet micro-controller, such as Rabbit microprocessor. I can develop an interface between FPGA and uC for data transmission. But I'm wondering how fast the speed is?

C) Using micro-controller + (MAC+PHY Ethernet single chip). Then porting uClinux or lwip to the uC and hanging FPGA to the address/data bus of the uC.

Any suggestions? Thank you.

JJ

Reply to
Steve
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Hi Steve, on Opencore there is a free MAC in hdl. so you can try to use it.

The Ethernet protocol is not difficoult, you can found some usefull informations on

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Francesco

Steve wrote:

Reply to
Quesito

Look at leon

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Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
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Reply to
Uwe Bonnes

Reply to
dexue

At least 10Mbps, desiralbly 100Mbps.

"dexue" ??????: snipped-for-privacy@79g2000cws.googlegroups.com...

Reply to
Steve

As long as you limit yourself to 10BASE-T, it is quite possible to implement the PHY in the FPGA, and for very low logic usage. See an implementation example

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Reply to
Jean Nicolle

I'm using Picoblaze to emulate the MAC (still on early stage, I can't tell whether it works or not). Basically, the MAC interface (MII) is not so hard to understand and the PHY layer helps against the noise from CAT5 cables.

Take a look at

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and the PHY's datasheet. The complete details about how should MAC work can be found in IEEE802.3 whitepaper
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But I think fpga4fun site's information is enough.

Reply to
kunil

"kunil" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@l12g2000cwl.googlegroups.com...

hah, look at U-BOOT, there is software bit bang MII management routine already included of course writing from scratch isnt much more complicated

Antti

Reply to
Antti Lukats

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