Is Transceiver Toolkit compatible with 8B10B encoder/decoder ?

Hi,

I want to test a transceiver link on a Stratix V GX SI Dev Board.

Firstly, I have successfully run the altera design example "sv_4ch_32b_6445mbps" with Quartus II v13.0SP1.

Then, I have modified the example, mainly by modifying the xcvr_custom_phy IP in QSys:

- different data rate and clock

- enabling 8B10B encoder/decoder

- adjusting the word alignment pattern accordingly...

I have successfully re-generated the design in QSys and then re-compiled the design in Quartus.

Then I have tested the modified design with the toolkit, I have obtained the following results:

- The Tx transceiver seems to run correctly

- For the Rx transceiver, the indicator "RX CDR locked to data" is green but the Receiver Channel remains in Yellow with the following indication: "TOOLTIP_STATUS_RECEIVER_CHECKING_BUT_NOT_LOCKED". ..

The behaviour is similar with and without the check of option "enable word aligner".

By looking for a solution, I have read again the chapter 11 of the Altera document "http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/qts/qts_qii5v3.pdf".

In the table 11-4 page 220, IP core configuration is provided.

For the Custom PHY, the following configuration is indicated:

-Set lanes, group size, serialization factor, data rate, and input clock frequency to match your application.

-Turn on Avalon data interfaces

-disable 8b/10b

-Set Word alignment mode to manual

-Disable rate match FIFO

-Disable byte ordering block

Based on this information, should we conclude that it is not possible to use 8B10B with the Transceiver Toolkit ?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best Regards

Mike