Intel® IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors—Ethernet MAC A
Intel® IXP42X Product Line of Network Processors and IXC1100 Control Plane Processor
DM September 2006
416 Order Number: 252480-006US
15.0 Ethernet MAC A
The functionality supported by the MII Interfaces is tightly coupled with the code
written on the Network Processor Engine (NPE) core. This chapter details the full
hardware capabilities of the MII Interface contained within the Ethernet coprocessor of
the Intel® IXP42X Product Line of Network Processors and IXC1100 Control Plane
Processor. The features accessible by the user are described in the Intel® IXP400
Software Programmer’s Guide and may be a subset of the features described below.
Not all of the Intel® IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors have
this functionality. See Table 1 51.
The IXP42X product line and IXC1100 control plane processors contains three NPEs.
Two of the three NPEs are used to process Ethernet traffic utilizing the MII interfaces.
Each NPE core used for Ethernet traffic connects to a Transmit FIFO and Receive FIFO
through the NPE Coprocessor interface. These Transmit and Receive FIFOs are used to
buffer data between the Ethernet Media Access Controller (MAC) and the NPE core.
The Transmit FIFO, Receive FIFO, and MAC are contained in an NPE coprocessor unit
called the Ethernet Coprocessor. The MAC contained in the Ethernet coprocessor is
compliant to the IEEE 802.3 specification as well as handling flow control for the
IEEE 802.3Q VLAN specification.
Table 151. Processors’ Devices with Ethernet Interface
Device UTOPIA HSS MII 0 MII 1 AES / DES /
3DES Multi-Channel
HDLC SHA-1 /
MD-5
IXP425 X X X X X 8 X
IXP423 X X X X 8
IXP422 X X X X
IXP421 X X X 8
IXP420 X X
IXC1100 X X