Ethernet interconnect

Ethernet-based interconnect is a mature networking protocol, but it keeps evolving in terms of features, physical transport mediums, and connection speeds. It is also one of the simple interfaces that can be used to connect two subsystems together and allow them to share data using a mature connectivity solution. The Ethernet protocol first appeared in 1980, and it was formally standardized under IEEE 802.3 in 1983. We cover Ethernet as an SoC interface because it is included in the Xilinx SoCs covered in this book; it can also allow us to connect two SoCs using the low-level Ethernet protocol as a data transport mechanism, by using a software TCP/IP stack running on an operating system on the Zynq SoC CPUs, or by defining a light data sharing protocol that can use the Ethernet protocol as a transport layer. We will cover communication applications in more detail in the advanced section of this book. In this chapter, we will introduce the Ethernet protocol and...