Sundance Spas ST201 manual Acronyms and Glossary, Standards Compliance, Functional Description

Sundance Technology

ST201

PRELIMINARY draft 2

ACRONYMS AND GLOSSARY

LAN	Local Area Network
MAC	Media Access Control Layer, or a
	device implementing the functions
	of this layer (a Media Access Con-
	troller)
PCI	Peripheral Component Interface
NIC	Network Interface Cards
FIFO	First In First Out
MII	Media Independent Interface
EPROM	Erasable	Programmable	Read
	Only Memory
EEPROM	Electrically Erasable Programma-
	ble Read Only Memory
LED	Light Emitting Diode
PHY	Physical Layer, or device imple-
	menting functions of the Physical
	Layer
CSMA/CD	Carrier Sense Multiple Access
	with Collision Detect
FCS	Frame Check Sequence
SFD	Start of Frame Delimiter
CRC	Cyclic-Redundancy-Check
IP	Internet Protocol
TFD	Transmit Frame Descriptor
RFD	Receive Frame Descriptor
DMA	Direct Memory Access
ACPI	Advanced	Configuration	and
	Power Management

STANDARDS COMPLIANCE

The ST201 implements functionality compliant with the following standards:

•IEEE 802.3u Fast Ethernet

•IEEE 802.3x Full Duplex Flow Control •PCI Local Bus Revision 2.1

•ACPI Revision 1.0

FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION

The ST201 is composed of various functional blocks as shown in Figure 1. An overview of the functions performed by each block follows:

MEDIA ACCESS CONTROL

The MAC block implements the IEEE Ethernet 802.3u Media Access Control functions with 802.3x Full Duplex and Flow Control enhancements. In half duplex mode, the MAC implements the CSMA/ CD. Full duplex mode by definition does not utilize

CSMA/CD, allowing data to be transmitted on demand. An optional flow control mechanism in full duplex mode is provided via the 802.3x MAC Con- trol PAUSE function. Additionally, the MAC also performs the following functions in either half or full duplex mode:

•Optional transmit FCS generation

•Padding to the minimum legal frame size

•Preamble and SFD generation

•Preamble and SFD removal

•Receive frame FCS checking and optional FCS stripping

•Receive frame destination address matching

•Support for multicast and broadcast frame recep- tion or rejection (via filtering)

•Selective InterFrame Gap to avoid capture effect

•MAC Loopback

The MAC is responsible for generation of hardware signals to update the internal statistics counters.

MEDIA INDEPENDENT INTERFACE

The ST201 can support a variety of physical signal- ing schemes via the IEEE 802.3u defined MII. Through the MII, the ST201 supports Fast Ethernet (such as 100BASE-TX) as well as the legacy 10BASE-T standard. The MII provides a general- purpose interface between an 802.3u MAC and various physical layer devices, and is comprised of two independent components. The data interface provides separate, 4-bit wide paths for receive and transmit data, as well as independent clock and control signals. The management interface is a bidirectional, serial link that provides the ST201 access to registers residing within the physical layer device. The host system controls the MII management interface through the PhyCtrl regis- ter.

Since the MII is independent of the signaling method (100BASE-TX, 10BASE-T, etc.), it is possi- ble to use it to support numerous Ethernet or Fast Ethernet LAN types depending upon the availability of MII-compliant PHY devices. The most widely available PHY devices support both 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX through a single MII.

It is most likely that a physical layer device con- nected to ST201’s MII will include implementation of the 802.3u Auto-Negotiation function. For instance, a PHY device may be able to auto-nego- tiate between 10BASE-T and 100BASE-TX. A host system attempting to determine link status should check the Auto-Negotiation function contained in the MII-based PHY device through the MII man- agement interface of the ST201.

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