Problems getting Altera's Triple Speed Ethernet IP core to work

0
votes

I am using a Cyclone V on a SoCKit board (link here) (provided by Terasic), connecting an HSMC-NET daughter card (link here) to it in order to create a system that can communicate using Ethernet while communication that is both transmitted and received goes through the FPGA - The problem is, I am having a really, really hard time getting this system to work using Altera's Triple Speed Ethernet core.

I am using Qsys to construct the system that contains the Triple Speed Ethernet core, instantiating it inside a VHDL wrapper that also contains an instantiation of a packet generator module, connected directly to the transmit Avalon-ST sink port of the TSE core and controlled through an Avalon-MM slave interface connected to a JTAG to Avalon Master bridge core which has it's master port exported to the VHDL wrapper as well.

Then, using System Console, I am configuring the Triple Speed Ethernet core as described in the core's user guide (link here) at section 5-26 (Register Initialization) and instruct the packet generator module (also using System Console) to start and generate Ethernet packets into the TSE core's transmit Avalon-ST sink interface ports.

Although having everything configured exactly as described in the core's user guide (linked above) I cannot get it to output anything on the MII/GMII output interfaces, neither get any of the statistics counters to increase or even change - clearly, I am doing something wrong, or missing something, but I just can't find out what exactly it is.

Can any one please, please help me with this? Thanks ahead, Itamar

1
vhdlfpgaethernetintel-fpga

1 Answers

1
votes

Starting the basic checks,

  1. Have you simulated it? It's not clear to me if you are just simulating or synthesizing. If you haven't simulated, you really should. If it's not working in SIM, why would it ever work in real life.

  2. Make sure you are using the QIP file to synthesize the design. It will automatically include your auto generated SDC constraints. You will still need to add your own PIN constraints, more on that later.

  3. The TSE is fairly old and reliable, so the obvious first things to check are Clock, Reset, Power and Pins.

    a.) Power is usually less of problem on devkits if you have already run the demo that came with the kit.

    b.) Pins can cause a whole slew of issues if they are not mapped right on this core. I'll assume you are leveraging something from Terasic. It should define a pin for reset, input clock and signal standards. Alot of times, this goes in the .qsf file, and you also reference the QIP file (mentioned above) in here too.

    c.) Clock & Reset is a more likely culprit in my mind. No activity on the interface is kind of clue. One way to check, is to route your clocks to spare pins and o-scope them and insure they are what you think they are. Similarly, if you may want to bring out your reset to a pin and check it. MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE POLARITY and you haven't been using ~reset in some places and non-inverted reset in others.

  4. Reconfig block. Some Altera chips and certain versions of Quartus require you to use a reconfig block to configure the XCVR. This doesn't seem like your issue to me because you say the GMII is flat lined.