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By external PHY, do you mean something like the "Dual XAUI to SFP+ HSMC" board for connecting SFP+ modules in case of Stratix IV GX?
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The external PHY is the chip on that HSMC board. If you look at the price of a GX FPGA plus the external PHY, you'll find that it is less than the price of a GT FPGA. However, the board layout will then need more chips, so you need to figure out what is the cost effective solution for your final design.
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As fas as I know, people has tested 10Gbps Ethernet with Stratix IV GT (but in 100G SIV GT dev board) in
http://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/10g_ethernet_and_10g_base_r_phy_interoperability_hardware_demonstration_design. Acording to the block diagram, they connect directly to SFP+ Optical module without an external board or PHY. If you can help to correct my understanding and clarify?
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The GT boards have 10Gbps transceivers, so they do not need the external PHY.
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Testing with PRBS generator is what I want now. But, later on, I need to read data in terms of multimedia file like a movie file from host PC, store in some on-chip memory or buffer, then transmit in packets to other boards. So, I am wondering how should I do that and what is the most suitable solution. I wait for your advice also:)
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Transferring data over PCIe would be suitable. However, since you purchased the GT signal integrity kit, you do not have that option.
http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-stratix-iv-gt-si.html The kit does have a 1000Mbit PHY, so that is about all you can use.
The other option would be to build a board that interfaces to the FCI Airmax VS connectors, but you'd need to check the hardware design to see if the PCIe hard-IP was available on those transceivers. If it was, then you could build a x1 PCIe breakout cable, and then connect to the board using one of the adapters from OneStopSystems:
http://www.onestopsystems.com/components.php Cheers,
Dave
Honored Contributor
