
21145
2
Preliminary 
Datasheet
The MII/SYM port supports two operational modes:
 MII mode—A full implementation of the MII standard
 SYM mode—Symbol interface to an external 100 Mb/s front-end decoder (ENDEC). In this 
mode the 21145 uses an onchip physical coding sublayer (PCS) and a scrambler/descrambler 
circuit to enable a low-cost 100BASE-T implementation.
The 21145 is capable of functioning in a full-duplex environment for the MII/SYM and 10BASE-T 
ports.
1.3
21145 Block Diagram
The following list describes the 21145 hardware components, and 
Figure 1
 shows a block diagram 
of the 21145: 
 PCI/CardBus interface—Includes all interface functions to the PCI and CardBus bus. Handles 
all interconnect control signals; and executes DMA and I/O transactions.
 Boot ROM/Modem port—Provides an interface to perform read and write operations to ISA 
compliant modem chipsets and to the boot ROM; supports accesses to bytes or longwords (32-
bit) to the boot ROM. Provides the ability to connect an external 8-bit register to the boot 
ROM port.
 Serial ROM port—Provides a direct interface to a MicroWire ROM for storage of the Ethernet 
address and system parameters.
 General-purpose register—Enables software use for input or output functions and LEDs.
 DMA—Contains independent receive and transmit controllers; handles data transfers between 
CPU memory and onchip memory.
 FIFOs—Contains independent FIFOs for receive and transmit. Supports automatic packet 
deletion on receive (runt packets or after a collision) and packet retransmission after a collision 
on transmit.
 RxM—Handles all CSMA/CD
1
 receive operations, and transfers the network data from the 
ENDEC to the receive FIFO.
 TxM—Handles all CSMA/CD MAC
2
 transmit operations, and transfers data from transmit 
FIFO to the ENDEC for transmission.
 SIA interface—Performs 10 Mb/s physical layer network operations; implements the 
HomePNA and 10BASE-T functions, including the Manchester encoder and decoder 
functions.
 NWAY—Implements the IEEE 802.3 Auto-Negotiation algorithm.
 Physical coding sublayer—Implements the encoding and decoding sublayer of the 100BASE-
TX (CAT5) specification, including the squelch feature.
 HomePNA PHY—Implements the HomePNA telephone network interface.
 Scrambler/descrambler—Implements the twisted-pair physical layer medium dependent 
(TP-PMD) scrambler/descrambler scheme for 100BASE-TX.
1. Carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection.
2. Media access control.