How difficult to design an Ethernet Swithc ASIC?

[tiger]

design of ethernet asic

I'm an electronic students, I want to design a 10/100 Ethernet switch chip, could you give me some advices on it?
I'm familiar with the ASIC design methodologies and tools, but I have no experiences on ASIC design, what should I pay much attention to? I only do the front-end. is it possible for me to do such big projects from beginning?

 

[yayawoo]

ethernet asic design

Bad choice. Too big and too complicated for a student. Knowing ASIC design methodologies and tools are great, but doesn't help you much on actually designing an ASIC. Although Ethernet switch is a well known technology, it doesn't mean it's easy to design. As a student, the Ethernet protocol itself will take you sometime to fully understand it. My suggestion to you would be scale down the design significantly, say designing just an Ethernet MAC with a MII or RMII interface. This is a very very very useful core.

I remember the first ASIC core that I designed back in the early 90's was a simple 4-bit MCU with only 24 instructions. It's then being used in a lot of simple applications such as TV remote control and telephone set.

Have fun.

 

[tiger]

Very very thanks! I think you help me a lot!
I will begin form an Ethernet MAC core design.

 

[dainis]

Look at: h**p://w*w.opencores.org/projects/ethmac/