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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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8 years ago

How can I make the Marvell 88E1111 operate in GMII instead of RGMII?

Hi,

I've recently gotten the ETHERNET-HSMC Card for use with the Cyclone V GX Starter Kit.

Problem: It uses RGMII by default, and I want GMII.

The manual just says that this can be changed through the management interface of the Marvell 88E1111, which is the PHY on the card.

But how? RGMII is not part of the IEEE Standard, so the respective register must be vendor-specific. Information about vendor-specific registers is in tha datasheet, which is not publicly available.

On the other hand, it wouldn't make sense for Intel/Altera/Terasic to sell a device that supports GMII, RGMII, and SGMII, without giving the customer the means to choose between these options.

What am I missing?

PS: This probably should have been posted under "Development Kit Related". Sorry about that.

2 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    8 years ago

    There should be a ban on Marvel products for development kits, the lack of public documentation make then a pain to use.

    The interface mode is set with the HWCFG_MODE[3:0] register. It should be 1111 for MII/GMII and 1011 for RGMII.

    The initial value of HWCFG_MODE[3:0] value comes from the configuration pins. I haven't look at the PCB but I guess that you can't change that from the FPGA.

    After power up you can change the mode by writing the new value of HWCFG_MODE[3:0] to bits 3:0 in register 27, and then perform a software reset. To perform a software reset, set the bit 15 of register 0 to 1. It will be cleared to 0 automatically when the reset operation is done.