1 Ethernet

Ethernet is a widespread industry standard for Local Area Networks (LAN) and is used in a variety of applications ranging from personal electronics to data centers. The Ethernet IEEE specification, IEEE 802.3, is incredibly broad and pertains to many different data rates and transmission mediums. However, one of the core functions of this specification is to standardize the physical media type and data rate used in various Ethernet systems. TI Ethernet retimers are able to lock to several of these data rates. Common Ethernet data rates that TI Ethernet retimers can lock to include 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, and 25 Gbps. Besides the differences in data rate, there is also a difference in the encoding typically found at each of these data rates. This can be seen in Table 1-1.

In general, TI’s Ethernet retimers are able to lock to any data rate that is within the device’s VCO range and subrates of that frequency. For example, the DS110DF410’s VCO can be set from 8.5 – 11.3 GHz. By setting the VCO to 10.3125 GHz and using a divider of 1, the device can lock to 10.3125 Gbps data. By setting the VCO to 10 GHz and using a divider of 8, the device can lock to 1.25 Gbps data. A wide range of VCO frequencies and subrates are supported across TI’s Ethernet retimer family and additional details on these can be found in each device-specific data sheet.