AN 735: Altera Low Latency Ethernet 10G MAC IP Core Migration Guidelines

ID 683191
Date 5/04/2015
Public

1. Altera Low Latency Ethernet 10G MAC IP Core Migration Guidelines

Altera offers two Ethernet MAC IP cores that can support up to 10 Gbps speed mode—10-Gbps Ethernet (10GbE) Media Access Controller (MAC) IP core and Low Latency Ethernet 10G MAC IP cores. The Low Latency Ethernet 10G MAC IP core is an enhanced version of the 10GbE MAC IP core and it provides lower resources and lower latency with an improved MAC functionality.

Existing users of the 10GbE MAC IP core can migrate to the Low Latency Ethernet 10G MAC IP core with minimal modifications on the system. However, it is important for you to understand the differences between these two IP cores before proceeding with the migration. This document describes the differences of both the MAC IP cores and provides the migration steps from 10GbE MAC IP core to Low Latency Ethernet 10G MAC IP core.

As a summary, there are multiple major differences between 10GbE MAC IP core and Low Latency Ethernet 10G MAC IP.

Table 1.   Summary of Low Latency Ethernet 10GbE MAC IP core vs 10Gbps Ethernet MAC IPTable shows the summary for all the differences between these two IP cores for quick reference.
Features Low Latency 10G Ethernet MAC IP core 10GbE MAC IP core
Supported Device Arria 10, Arria V GZ, Stratix V Cyclone, Arria, and Stratix devices except Arria 10 1
MAC Latency (TX + RX)
  • 60.8 ns (MAC with 10Gbps)
  • 356.8 ns (MAC with 1Gbps)
  • 2968 ns (MAC with 100 Mbps)
  • 29168 ns (MAC with 10Mbps)
  • 140.8 ns (MAC with 10 Gbps)
  • 422.4 ns (MAC with 1 Gbps)
  • 3128 ns (MAC with 100 Mbps)
  • 29968 ns (MAC with 10 Mbps)
Avalon Streaming (Avalon-ST) Interface Data width 32-bit, 64-bit 64-bit
XGMII Interface Data width 32-bit, 64-bit 64-bit
Register mapping
  • Starting address 0x0000
  • Backward compatible with 10GbE Ethernet IP with 64-bit Avalon-MM adapter
Starting address 0x000
ECC detection and correction Available Not Available
1 Device variant and Quartus II version dependent. Refer to the 10-Gbps Ethernet MAC IP Core User Guide for more information.