TSE MAC connected to SPI bridge

Hi all,

Has everyone of you ever tried to build a bridge between TSE MAC and a serial port, spi or other?

I already have it connected with dma to a Nios2 processor but I now need a high performance channel to another external processor. This one will simply send and recv raw ethernet frames through a serial port, so the intermediate passage on Nios would be a waste of time and resources.

I thought I could keep the tse control port connected to Nios for initialization and then use the Avalon-ST SPI bridge to transfer data.

Is this possible? Do tse support such a way of operation?

Would I need to implement a complicated protocol on spi or can I simply send and receive packet data with minimal effort?

Is there any example or ref design available?

I know these are a lot of questions, but I need to know if it makes sense to start hitting this road or find other solutions.

Cris