Xilinx' Successfully Completes UNH interoperability Lab Testing for its Ethernet Solutions Suite

Proving hardware interoperability is key to ensuring market acceptance of networking silicon because it confirms that the silicon device will work as expected with silicon devices from other silicon vendors. "Interoperability" implies Plug and Play operation. OEMs generally look favorably at devices that have been tested for interoperability as untested devices may cause product delays and increase the support burden.

Standards conformance tests completed in neutral environments such as university laboratories or industry plugfests provide the assurance that the device(s) conform to the standards and will work with other standards-compliant device(s). The University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Lab (UNH IOL) is the networking industry's de facto gold standard for testing a silicon device for conformance and interoperability with the IEEE standards for Ethernet and Fibre Channel. Xilinx is a strong believer in providing its customers with high quality products and solutions that are easy to design with - interoperability and conformance testing in a neutral setting is just one facet of Xilinx' commitment to quality.

Xilinx is the only programmable logic vendor to complete the IEEE 802.3 conformance and interoperability tests at the UNH IOL for its Ethernet Solutions Suite, including the 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and the 10/100 Ethernet solutions. System designers building high performance networking equipment using the Xilinx Ethernet solution can now benefit from

• Reduced risk
• Accelerated time-to-market
• Proven interoperability with other standards compliant device(s)
• Significantly reduced hardware testing cycle
• Highest likelihood of first time design success and seamless plug-and-play operation
• Lowered support burden in the field

The following is a synopsis of the tests that were performed at the UNH IOL on the Xilinx solution:

Interoperability tests were performed on Xilinx boards for the 10G and 1G cores, and on a partner board for 10/100 Mb. The 10/100 test used Insight Virtex-II (DS-BD-V2MB1000) boards with a P160 communications module (DS-BD-MBEXF1), 1 Gb test used Xilinx ML320 board and for the 10 Gb XAUI interoperability and RXLane deskew tests were performed on both the Xilinx ML321 and ML330 Virtex-II Pro development board.

10/100 Mbps Ethernet Test Suites

The MAC conformance test was performed on the Xilinx's OPB Ethernet V1.0, Virtex-II Pro development board.

The conformance testing included the following test suites:

• Flow Control
• MAC
• PCS
• Physical Layer Point-To-Point InterOperability

TEST SETUP

1 Gigabit Ethernet Test Suites

The test design for Gigabit based on the ML320 platform, similar to that used for UNH verification of the 10GEMAC, was used (see figure below). The design makes use of the PowerPC processor in V2Pro as well as an internally developed asynchronous FIFO. Firmware was developed in C.

The conformance testing included the following 5 test suites:

• Flow Control
• MAC
• PCS
• Physical Layer Point-To-Point InterOperability

TEST SETUP

10Gb Ethernet Test Suites

Xilinx participated in 3 separate XAUI Group Tests with 14 other 10Gb equipment vendors at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab covering the following areas:

• Stressed XAUI Links
• Optical Stressed Receiver
• XAUI Deskew Testing

The tests involved 16 different products from 14 different manufactures. The test events focused on five areas pertinent to 10GE:

• XAUI Interoperability
• Optical (LR) Physical Layer measurements
• Optical (LR) Interoperability
• XAUI PMD measurements
• XAUI Rx Lane deskew

TEST SETUP

For the first time, the most rigorous input data pattern (known as CJPAT) was used to successfully demonstrate that XAUI devices from multiple vendors across multiple types and lengths of backplanes/connectors could achieve the desired bit-error ratio (BER) of 1x10-12 with greater than 95% confidence. The principal test performed was the stressed receiver conformance.

Copies of the test reports mentioned above are available through local Xilinx sales representatives. See additional details about Xilinx Ethernet solutions.