Hi all : what will the ethernet part of minsoc actually do? The MAC is included in verilog, so I guess I need to buy a board with only the PHYS - would the Ordb2a-ep4ce22 be suitable? I'm new to this - how would minsoc ethernet manifest itself on this board - am I correct to say there is no TCPIP, so ping-ing the board is no use. The MAC address would make the board detectable on a network?

To create a simple web server on minsoc, would it be possible code a simple IP stack?

If I buy a board with a MAC chip (instead of just PHYS) then would the minsoc ethernet example not be appropriate?
Thanks in advance, John B.

Hi John,

The ethernet MAC will communicate with a phy via a MII or RMII interface. It should be compatible with most FPGA development board that has an onboard PHY (ordb2a is supported). The other side of the MAC exposes a wishbone interface that you can use to feed frames to and from the MAC.

There isn't any IP, TCP or UDP layers in the hardware, but if you run MinSoC you can handle that in software instead. I haven't used MinSoC very much, but we have been running linux with web servers on similar systems, so that would probably not be too much problem

If you want to buy a board with a hardware MAC, then you would have to see what interface it exposes towards the FPGA and create a proper interface to communicate with the chip.

Does this anwer your questions?

--
Olof Kindgren
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ORSoC
Website: www.orsoc.se
Email: olof.kindgren@orsoc.se
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FPGA, ASIC, DSP - embedded SoC design

Many thanks - that answers all my questions - thanks John B.