ethernet mac

[sachin]

Hi,

Can i have tutorial for bulding ethernet mac in nexys 3 board 

[D@n]

@sachin,

If you look at the resource page for the Nexys 3, you can find all of the tutorials Digilent has for the Nexys 3.

If you don't find the tutorial you want there, you can check for a tutorial for a similar part on another board.  For example, the Arty appears to use the same interface--at least based upon wires and wire names.  It may be that a tutorial exists to use the Ethernet port on the Arty.  Looking at the resource page for the Arty, there are several tutorials for getting started, to include one for getting started with MicroBlaze servers, and even some example projects--such as Xilinx's FreeRTOS server project.

Sadly, while these tutorials are simple, they do little to teach you how to build an actual ethernet mac.  They teach more about how to point and click, connect wires, and connect someone else's interface.  When that interface doesn't work for you, or when you upgrade your version of Vivado (or in the Nexys-3's case, of ISE), these tutorials leave you out of luck: they haven't taught you how to understand the underlying interface, nor have they taught you much about what you need to do to design your own.

Should you choose instead to build your own, the method forward is actually fairly straightforward.  You start by opening the schematic, which for the Nexys-3 can be found here.  You can find out how the ethernet chip is wired up on page 9 of that schematic.  Not only that, if you look at the label on the ethernet chip within the schematic, you will learn that the ethernet phy is provided by a "LAN8710Ai-EZK" chip.  A quick Google search for "LAN8710Ai-EZK" turns up a specification sheet for microchips LAN8710A chip series, showing you all the things you need to know in order to connect to and operate this ethernet chip.  The specification sheet tends to be quite detailed, but ... it's thoroughness will help keep you out of trouble as you go along.  Your task, should you choose to go this road, tends to be twofold: First, you'll need to build logic to interact directly with the hardware and turn the hardware's signaling standard into something more appropriate for what you wish to design.  At that level, timing is everything.  Second, once you've moved a step away from the hardware interface, you'll then need to determine what and how you wish to move next with it.

Hopefully, that helps you.

Dan

[jpeyron]

Hi @sachin,

On the resource page @D@n link to above on the lower right of the page is the nexys3_bsb_support_v_2_8.zip that has Ethernet in the project. Here is a tutorial on making a project with the Nexys 3 that has Ethernet. Unfortunately, We do not have a tutorial on making an actual Ethernet mac without using pre-made IP cores. 

cheers,

Jon