Is the transceiver Standard PCS 8B/10B decoder compliant to the Fibre Channel specification in Altera® Arria® V, Cyclone® V GX, and Stratix® V devices?

Description

No, the transceiver Standard PCS 8B/10B decoder is not fully compliant to the Fibre Channel specification in Altera® Arria V, Cyclone® V GX, and Stratix® V devices. 

The Fibre Channel protocol requirements for "Detection of Invalid transmission Word" for certain data rates state that Ordered Sets received with incorrect beginning running disparity be flagged as an error. The Altera® Arria V, Cyclone® V GX, and Stratix® V devices device 8B/10B decoder determines running disparity on a character-by-character basis and not Ordered Sets. 

Due to this non-compliance, you may or may not be able to use the transceiver Standard PCS 8B/10B decoder.

Resolution

To work around this problem you can implement Fibre Channel compliant 8B/10B decoding in the FPGA core.