The Triple Speed Ethernet (TSE) Small MAC is Altera's proprietary limited function MAC.
Although there are mainly the following restrictions, there is an advantage that the circuit scale (number of LEs) can be reduced.
- Maximum frame length fixed at 1518 bytes
・ Hash function is not supported
・ Full-duplex flow control using pause frames is not supported
- The inter-packet gap is a fixed value of 12 bytes.
・ Threshold value for built-in FIFO is fixed value only
- The store-and-forward method of frame transfer is not supported.
・ Not compatible with full-duplex flow control

For details on the difference between 10/100/1000 Ethernet MAC and Small MAC, please refer to the user guide at the URL link below and search for the keyword “small MAC”.

  https://www.altera.com/en_US/pdfs/literature/ug/ug_ethernet.pdf