
VITESSE
SEMICONDUCTOR CORPORATION
741 Calle Plano, Camarillo, CA 93012 805/388-3700 FAX: 805/987-5896
Page 13
6/14/00
VITESSE
Preliminary Datasheet
VSC7217
Multi-Gigabit Interconnect Chip
G52325-0, Rev. 3.0
If the transmitting devices’
REFCLK
s are not frequency locked to the receiving devices’
REFCLK
s,
IDLEs will have to be added to or dropped from all the channels at the same time. In order to implement this,
one VSC7217 is arbitrarily chosen as the “Master” and its
WSO
output is driven to the
WSI
inputs of all the
receiving VSC7217s, including itself.
WSO
is asserted prior to the VSC7217 adding/dropping IDLEs so all the
VSC7217s will operate simultaneously.
WSO
uses a simple 3-bit serial protocol, synchronous to the Master
channel’s word clock, for indicating the required synchronization action to other VSC7217s. A steady LOW
level indicates no action is required. ‘101’ indicates that Master Channel A has seen a Word Sync Event. The
relative timing relationship between receiving a Word Sync Event (on all channels together) and seeing ‘101’
on the
WSI
input in the other channels allows these channels to word-synchronize with Master Channel A.
‘110’ indicates that the next IDLE encountered in the receive data stream should be deleted. ‘111’ indicates that
an IDLE should be inserted after the next IDLE encountered in the receive data stream. Note that the arbitrarily
chosen Master Channel A must be an active channel.
Decoder Bypass Mode
If
ENDEC
is LOW, the 8B/10B decoder is bypassed and a 10-bit received character
Rn(9:0)
is output from
each receive channel. The
K CHn
output becomes
Rn8,
and
ERRn
becomes
Rn9
. Character alignment is han-
dled differently in this mode of operation. As mentioned in the “Encoder Bypass Mode” section, the
K CHAR
input becomes
ENCDET
which enables Comma detection and re-synchronization when HIGH, and disables re-
synchronization when LOW. Only the ‘0011111xxx’ version of the Comma pattern is recognized when
ENDEC
is LOW. The
IDLEn
output becomes
COMDET
(Comma Detect) which signals detection of the
‘0011111xxx’ Comma pattern in the current 10-bit output character when high. This mode of operation is
equivalent to a 10-bit interface commonly found in serializer/deserializers for the Fibre Channel (VSC7125)
and Gigabit Ethernet markets (VSC7135).
The logic used to align the four receive channels and/or insert and delete IDLE characters to compensate
for REFCLK variations between transmitting and receiving devices is disabled when
ENDEC
is LOW. In order
for this mode of operation to function without errors, the word clock source, as selected by
RMODE(1:0)
, must
be frequency-locked to the REFCLK of the remote transmitting device in each channel. This is guaranteed
when
RMODE(1:0)
= 11. For other choices of
RMODE(1:0)
, the frequency locked condition must be guaran-
teed by system design. When
DUAL
is HIGH and
RMODE(1:0)
= 10 or 11, the character containing the
‘0011111xxx’ Comma pattern is aligned to
RCL K n
/
RCLK Nn
in each channel so that
COMDET
will be
asserted on the falling edge of
RCL K n
(rising edge of
RCL K Nn
). This is done by adjusting the latency
through the elastic buffer; the recovered clock is never stretched or slivered. When the Comma pattern changes
the framing boundary, data characters prior to the assertion of
COMDET
on the falling edge of
RCLK n
may
be corrupted.
Receiver State Machine
Each channel contains a Loss of Synchronization State Machine (LSSM) which is responsible for detecting
and handling loss of bit, channel, word and word clock synchronization in a controlled manner. There are three
states in the LSSM: LOSS_OF_SY NC, RESY NC, and SY NC_ACQUIRED as shown in the state diagram of
Figure9. The RESYNC state is entered when a 10-bit word has been received which contains the 7-bit Comma
pattern (e.g., a K28.5 IDLE character). After entering the RESY NC state, the VSC7217 will stay in it until a
valid, non-Comma transmission is received, then it transitions to the SYNC_ACQUIRED state indicating a nor-
mal operating condition. The RESYNC state is re-entered if four consecutive Commas are received or if a sin-
gle Comma is received that changes the 10B character framing boundary. The LOSS_OF_SY NC state is