Agilex7 F-Tile PMA/FEC Direct PHY IP Reconfiguration

Hello Altera Support Team,

We are currently working with the Agilex 7 F-Series Transceiver (F-Tile) and evaluating the PMA/FEC Direct PHY IP for our application.

We would like to clarify the reconfiguration capabilities and supported procedure for dynamically changing the transceiver data rate during operation.

Our primary requirement is to change the transceiver operating data rate dynamically, depending on the detected protocol or link speed.

We would appreciate your clarification on the following points:

Reconfiguration Support in Direct PHY IP:

• Does the standard Agilex 7 F-Tile PMA/FEC Direct PHY IP support dynamic reconfiguration of the transceiver data rate?
• Can we change the TX/RX PMA data rate at runtime without regenerating or reconfiguring the entire FPGA image?

Direct PHY vs. Multirate Direct PHY IP:

• Is the standard PMA/FEC Direct PHY IP sufficient to support dynamic data-rate changes?
• Or is it mandatory to use the Agilex 7 F-Tile PMA/FEC Direct PHY Multirate IP for this functionality?
• What are the key architectural and functional differences between these two IP variants regarding runtime data-rate reconfiguration?

Reconfiguration Procedure:

• What is the recommended sequence of operations for changing the transceiver data rate?
• Do we have to write registers of IP or do we have to use separate IP instances while using F-tile Dynamic Reconfiguration IP?
• With F-tile Dynamic Reconfiguration IP, can we use standard F-Tile PMA/FEC Direct PHY IP(not the multirate one) for dynamic reconfiguration? Because F-tile Dynamic Reconfiguration IP's user guide only suggest to use multirate IP.

Looking forward for your response. Any example design regarding this would be appreciated.