The combination of the Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS), the Physical Medium Attachment (PMA), and the Physical Medium Dependent (PMD) sublayer comprises the physical layers of the Ethernet protocol.
Two main physical standards are specified for Ethernet:
- BASE-T, a copper standard using twisted pair cabling systems
- BASE-X, usually a fiber optical physical standard using short and long wavelength laser
BASE-T devices, supporting 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, and 1 Gbps Ethernet speeds are readily available as off-the-shelf parts. As illustrated in Figure 1 , these can be connected using GMII/MII, RGMII, or SGMII to provide a tri-speed Ethernet port.
The 1000BASE-X architecture can be provided by connecting the TEMAC core to the Ethernet 1G/2.5G PCS/PMA or SGMII core.
A detailed Ethernet protocol overview is provided in Protocol Description.