Hi guys!!

Well, I've bought a cheap development board ALTERA FPGA Cyclone II EP2C5T144.
I'm beginer and I want to know if I can use a core Ethernet to implement it in that FPGA.

If I can do it...... What considerations do I have to know?? (Do you have some experience to tell me?...I'll be thanking)
If I can´t do it ...... Can you tell why I can´t do it?

Any experience about that FPGA using any core I'll be thanking to you.

Regards!!

If you want to use an ethernet core, the two biggest things you need to be concerned with are:

• What is the interface necessary to control the core? Is it wishbone? B3 or B4? Classic or Pipelined? How wide is the data bus? What speed does the core run at?
• Then you need to be concerned with the interface on the other end. There are several physical interfaces to ethernet chips (PHY's). Whereas I built a core for an RMII ethernet PHY that works nicely for a 10/100 ethernet, that core won't work at all for an RGMII interface such as the one the Nexys Video board that I'm working with has. Still, I think the MDIO interface is general enough across both interfaces, so I might be able to reuse that code.

Those two items will help you find the core you are interested in, or at least limit them down.

Other considerations to think of will be how good is the documentation. If you are going to try using someone else's core, you're going to want to know how to do it. Is the documentation clear enough to be read and understood? Or will you need to dive into the internals of the core to discover how it works? Does the documentation outline any clocking or timing limits?

Don't forget to check the license, to know if it is compatible with your project or not.

Dan