Many issues can occur during the first hardware test. This section details the debugging process. It is assumed that the 100G Ethernet subsystem has already passed all simulation testing which is being implemented in hardware. This is a pre-requisite for any kind of hardware debug.
The following sequence helps to isolate ethernet-specific problems:
- Clean up Signal Integrity.
- Ensure that each SerDes achieves clock data recovery (CDR) lock.
- Check that each lane has achieved word alignment.
- Check that lane alignment has been achieved.
- Proceed to Interface Debug and Protocol Debug.