--First Member of AMD's NetPHY Family of Physical Layer Devices--
SUNNYVALE, CA -- June 1, 1998 --AMD today introduced NetPHY-1, a stand-alone 10/100Mbps single port physical layer (PHY) device. The NetPHY-1 works as a companion device to AMD's line of 10/100Mbps single-chip Ethernet controllers and internetworking products, forming the basis for powerful and inexpensive 10/100Mbps networking solutions.
The NetPHY-1 is the first member of AMD's family of 10/100Mbps Ethernet PHY devices. The NetPHY family of devices will provide 10/100Mbps PHY capability for both single- and multi-port products. The NetPHY-1 is ideal for network interface cards (NICs) and switch uplinks, while future multi-port NetPHY devices will meet the higher port count needs of repeaters and switches.
"The NetPHY-1 device is more than just a cost-effective alternative to other high-performance PHYs," said Gary Smerdon, director of marketing for AMD's network products division. "AMD can now offer customers one-stop shopping for competitive performance, inexpensive implementations for 10/100Mbps LAN-on-the-motherboard and NICs. The NetPHY-1 and PCnet-FAST+ bundled solution offers several hardware and software management and performance enhancement features such as Magic Packet™ remote wake-up technology, licensable pre-boot execution environment (PXE) remote boot ROM firmware, support for higher-level 32-bit performance-tuned software drivers."
About NetPHY-1
The NetPHY-1 device connects directly to category 5 (UTP) cable for 100BASE-TX Fast Ethernet or category 3 (UTP) cable for 10BASE-T Ethernet. The MAC layer interface is a standard Media Independent Interface (MII) or a 5-bit symbol interface, ensuring interoperability between products from other vendors.
The NetPHY-1 contains the entire physical layer functionality for supporting 100BASE-TX, as defined in IEEE 802.3u, including Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS), Physical Medium Attachment (PMA), and Twisted Pair Physical Medium Dependent (TP-PMD).
The NetPHY-1 Features:
- Integrated 100BASE-X transceiver with MLT-3
- Support for 10/100Mbps Ethernet full-duplex control protocol auto-detection as defined in IEEE802.3x
- Direct interface to industry standard electrical/optical transceivers, making it 100BASE-FX fiber optic capable
- Support for 10BASE-T interface without the need for an external filter
- High performance 100Mbps clock generator and data recovery circuitry
Package, Price, Availability
The NetPHY-1 (AM79C873) device is available now. The device, in a 100-pin PQFP package, is priced at $6.10 in quantities of 10K.
