Contents
MDIO History
Management Data Input/Output, or MDIO, is a 2-wire serial bus that is used to manage PHYs or physical layer devices in media access controllers (MACs) in Gigabit Ethernet equipment. The management of these PHYs is based on the access and modification of their various registers.
MDIO was originally defined in Clause 22 of IEEE RFC802.3. In the original specification, a single MDIO interface is able to access up to 32 registers in 32 different PHY devices. These registers provide status and control information such as: link status, speed ability and selection, power down for low power consumption, duplex mode (full or half), auto-negotiation, fault signaling, and loopback.
To meet the needs the expanding needs of 10-Gigabit Ethernet devices, Clause 45 of the 802.3ae specification provided the following additions to MDIO:
- Ability to access 65,536 registers in 32 different devices on 32 different ports
- Additional OP-code and ST-code for Indirect Address register access for 10 Gigabit Ethernet
- End-to-end fault signaling
- Multiple loopback points
- Low voltage electrical specification
Theory of Operation
The MDIO bus has two signals: Management Data Clock (MDC) and Managment Data Input/Ouput (MDIO).
MDIO has specific terminology to define the various devices on the bus. The device driving the MDIO bus is identified as the Station Management Entity (STA). The target devices that are being managed by the MDC are referred to as MDIO Manageable Devices (MMD).
The STA initiates all communication in MDIO and is responsible for driving the clock on MDC. MDC is specified to have a frequency of up to 2.5 MHz.
Clause 22
Clause 22 defines the MDIO communication basic frame format (figure 13) which is composed of the following elements:
Figure 13: Basic MDIO Frame Format
| ST | 2 bits | Start of Frame (01 for Clause 22) |
| OP | 2 bits | OP Code |
| PHYADR | 5 bits | PHY Address |
| REGADR | 5 bits | Register Address |
| TA | 2 bits | Turnaround time to change bus ownership from STA to MMD if required |
| DATA | 16 bits | Data Driven by STA during write Driven by MMD during read |
The frame format only allows a 5-bit number for both the PHY address and the register address, which limits the number of MMDs that the STA can interface. Additionally, Clause 22 MDIO only supports 5V tolerant devices and does not have a low voltage option.
Clause 45
In order to address the deficiencies of Clause 22, Clause 45 was added to the 802.3 specification. Clause 45 added support for low voltage devices down to 1.2V and extended the frame format (figure 14) to provide access to many more devices and registers. Some of the elements of the extended frame are similar to the basic data frame:
Figure 14: Extended MDIO Frame Format
| ST | 2 bits | Start of Frame (00 for Clause 45) |
| OP | 2 bits | OP Code |
| PHYADR | 5 bits | PHY Address |
| DEVTYPE | 5 bits | Device Type |
| TA | 2 bits | Turnaround time to change bus ownership from STA to MMD if required |
| ADDR/DATA | 16 bits | Address or Data Driven by STA for address Driven by STA during write Driven by MMD during read Driven by MMD during read-increment-address |
The primary change in Clause 45 is how the registers are accessed. In Clauses 22, a single frame specified both the address and the data to read or write. Clause 45 changes this paradigm. First an address frame is sent to specify the MMD and register. A second frame is then sent to perform the read or write.
The benefits of adding this two cycle access are that Clause 45 is backwards compatible with Clause 22, allowing devices to interoperate with each other. Secondly, by creating a address frame, the register address space is increased from 5 bits to 16 bits, which allows an STA to access 65,536 different registers.
In order to accomplish this, several changes were made in the composition of the data frame. A new ST code (00) is defined to identify Clause 45 data frames. The OP codes were expanded to specify an address frame, a write frame, a read frame, or a read and post read increment address frame. Since the register address is no longer needed, this field is replaced with DEVTYPE to specify the targeted device type. The expanded device type allows the STA to access other devices in addition to PHYs.
Additional details about Clause 45 can be found on the IEEE 802.3 workgroup website.
References
- IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee
- Use The MDIO Bus To Interrogate Complex Devices– Electronic Design Magazine