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MII PHY, GPSI PHY and MII Host/DTE

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Ant_Magma

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm currently looking for a power line communication transceiver
module.

I saw the following terms on www.belfuse.com in one of their product
description, is about the host interface:

1) MII PHY
2) GPSI PHY
3) MII Host/DTE

I guess they might be very fundamental stuff, but can someone tell me
what are they and how do they interface with the PC? How do i make them
work?

Thx guys
 
P

PeteS

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ant_Magma said:
I'm currently looking for a power line communication transceiver
module.

I saw the following terms on www.belfuse.com in one of their product
description, is about the host interface:

1) MII PHY
2) GPSI PHY
3) MII Host/DTE


I guess they might be very fundamental stuff, but can someone tell me
what are they and how do they interface with the PC?

Cross-posted to sci.electronics.basics which is a more appropriate
place for this level of question. Followups to sci.electronics.basics

These are indeed very fundamental pieces, and defined in IEEE 802.3
(definition freely available on the net via a quick google search).
They don't interface directly externally to a PC - MII is 'Media
Independent Interface', so called because the physical layer is not a
data pair, but logic signals.

PHYs and MACs interface to a processor (of some description) on the
command port (MDC/MDIO usually, but there are others, especially SPI)
and to the ethernet transport layer either through magnetics (for
cables) or capacitive coupling for ethernet over backplane (been there,
done that). MACs and PHYs connect to each other through MII/RMII/GPSI.

I'm not going to fully define their operation for you - get a datasheet
and read it. A typical datasheet is at:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/22304.pdf
(AM79c901A home networking PHY)

One clue is this - MAC (Media Access Controllers) and PHYs (Physical
layer interfaces) are usually separate for ethernet. The way they
communicate is what you are looking at above. MII is very common, but
so is GPSI (General Purpose Serial Interface).

That's the data port. There's also (usually), as I mentioned, a command
port running either MDC/MDIO or SPI.

MACs and PHYs each provide different functions.

Once you have looked through the datasheets and app notes, (which will
give you an idea of the operation of the devices), come back and ask
again. It's not unwillingness to answer the question, but we do
appreciate questioners who do at least some legwork.

How do i make them

Connect them up appropriately :)

Seriously, it would take a long time (and pictures) to explain their
operation - I suggest reading available data sheets and application
notes to get the basic idea. Try AMD and Intel for starters.

Apart from that, if you don't apparently even know what DTE means, it
would be difficult to explain it

Cheers

PeteS
 
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