Interlaken-PHY
Overview
Interlaken is a royalty-free interconnect protocol that was developed by Cisco Systems and Cortina Systems in 2006. The full Interlaken protocol (described in the Interlaken Protocol Specification, v1.2) was designed to support chip-to-chip packet transfers in high-bandwidth networking equipment. A full Interlaken solution consists of the Interlaken Protocol Layer which runs on top of the Interlaken Framing Layer. The full Interlaken protocol is often viewed as too complex for designers who are looking for a lightweight, low-overhead way to connect multiple FPGAs, systems, or sensors. For these cases, the Interlaken Framing Layer gives us everything we need for an extremely scalable, high-bandwidth, low-overhead and lightweight FPGA interconnect that supports any FPGA device family all with a common user interface. The Interlaken Framing Layer is combined with the FPGA transceiver to form a complete IP core that we call the Interlaken-PHY IP Core.
Key Features
- Fully compliant with Interlaken Protocol v.12 Framing Layer specification
- Any number of physical lanes supported
- Channel bonding handled by core
- Runs at any rate supported by transceiver
- User datapath width of 64-bits per lane
- Automatic, self-synchronizing link(s)
- Support for Altera and Xilinx FPGAs
- 64B/67B Data Encoding
- Over 95% Bandwidth efficient
- Ensures DC balance by bounding baseline wander for high link stability
- 58-bit Synchronous Scrambler
- Guarantees bit transitions
- Ensures low EMI characteristics
- Allows link to self-synchronize without user intervention
- CRC32 generation and verification
- Verifies data integrity
- Identifies lane(s) with data errors
Benefits
- Channel bonding supported for any number of physical lanes
- Any serial line rate supported by the FPGA transceiver can be used
- Self-synchronizing links and automatic link resynchronization
- Per-lane CRC32 for data integrity and diagnostics
- Superb DC balancing for maximum link stability
- Over 95% bandwidth efficient
Block Diagram
Applications
- Low overhead, scalable interconnects
- Excellent choice for streaming sensor data
- High-bandwidth backplanes
- High-bandwidth cables
- Many users choose to build their own custom protocol on top of this Interlaken-PHY
Technical Specifications
Availability
Now