Low Latency Ethernet 10G MAC Intel® FPGA IP User Guide: Agilex™ 5 FPGAs and SoCs

ID 813663
Date 10/07/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

3.5.1. XGMII Decapsulation

The MAC RX expects the first byte of receive packets to be in lane 0, xgmii_rx_data[7:0]. If the 32-bit adapter on the XGMII is present, the first byte of receive packets must be in lane 0 or lane 4, xgmii_rx_data[39:32]. Receive packets must also be preceded by a column of idle bytes or an ordered set such as a local fault. Packets that do not satisfy these conditions are invalid and the MAC RX drops them.

By default, the MAC RX only accepts packets that begin with a 1-byte START, 6-byte preamble, and 1-byte SFD. Packets that do not satisfy this condition are invalid and the MAC RX drops them.

When you enable the preamble passthrough mode (rx_preamble_control register = 1), the MAC RX only checks packets that begin with a 1-byte START. In this mode, the MAC RX does not remove the START and custom preamble, but passes the bytes along with the frame to the client.

After examining the packet header bytes in the correct order, the MAC IP retrieves the frame data from the packet. If the frame data starting from the destination address field is less than 17 bytes, the MAC IP may or may not drop the frame. If the erroneous frame is not dropped but forwarded, an undersized error is flagged to the external logic to drop the frame. If the frame is more than 17 bytes, the MAC forwards the frame as normal and flags error whenever applicable.