February 15, 2005 -- LSI Logic has licensed Mentor's 10/100/1000 Ethernet Media Access Controller (MAC) intellectual property (IP) core. The core has been proven in silicon and has been pre-verified and tested for easy integration into system-on-chip (SoC) designs. Mentor Graphics provides third-party IP with cores supporting major communications protocols, including Ethernet 802.3, USB 2.0, USB On-the-Go, Parallel and Serial ATA, and PCI Express.

Mentor Graphics acquired the complete line of Ethernet IP from Alcatel in July 2003. Mentor has enhanced and grown the product line since its acquisition with the addition of new features and product offerings such as the M-SGMII Serial Gigabit Media Independent Interface (M-SGMII) core. Mentor IP is silicon-proven in multiple process technologies, and is currently used in 10/100 Mbit/s ports and Gigabit Ethernet ports shipping worldwide.

"This Ethernet MAC IP provides designers with more time to concentrate on product differentiation and delivering products to market before their competitors," said Terry Pence, communications marketing manager, LSI Logic, "This IP from Mentor Graphics meets our stringent criteria, and we are pleased to offer versions based on this industry-leading core to our mutual customers for both ASIC and RapidChip Platform ASIC implementations."

Being designed into the LSI Logic IP library means the function, performance, verification, timing, test and manufacturability issues have already been resolved, providing designers with a head start on their system architecture. The 10/100/1000 MAC core is a "high adoption" rate core being driven by the need for network connectivity in consumer, storage and embedded systems. In the traditional enterprise networking space, growing port density requirements are quickly accelerating the Gigabit Ethernet adoption rate.

The PE-MCXMAC IP core from Mentor Graphics is a full-featured Media Access Controller capable of full-duplex operation at 10, 100, or 1000 megabits per second and half-duplex operation at 10, or 100 megabits per second. The PE-MCXMAC core includes a MII and Gigabit MII Interface, as well as the MAC Control Sub-layer as defined in 802.3x. Support is included for both standard and proprietary Control frames. Reduced Gigabit MII, reduced MII, 10/100 Mbps Serial MII and 1000 Mbps TBI SERDES are also available in the Mentor Graphics range of soft cores.

The PE-MCXMAC core also includes the MAC Control sub-layer, which provides support for Control frames, particularly PAUSE frames. (Other types of Control frames can be supported through setting optional configuration bits.) This modular architecture allows customers to select and use the optimal configuration for their design.