
PMC-Sierra,Inc.
4-Channel 1.0-1.25 Gbps Transceiver
PMC-2000673 (R3)
PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL TO PMC-SIERRA, INC., AND FOR ITS CUSTOMERS
’
 INTERNAL USE
 Copyright PMC
-
Sierra, Inc. 2001
PM8353 QuadPHY
FEATURES
 Four independent 1.0-1.25 Gbit/s 
transceivers
 Four secondary channels to support 
channel redundancy
 Ultra low power operation: 1.25 Watt 
typical
 Integrated serializer/deserializer, clock 
synthesis, clock recovery, and 8B/10B 
encode/decode logic
 Physical Coding Sublayer (PCS) logic 
for Gigabit Ethernet
 Selectable 8-bit, 10-bit, or IEEE 802.3z 
GMII parallel interface
 Optional Receive FIFOs which 
synchronize incoming data to local 
clock domain
 “Trunking” feature to de-skew and 
align received parallel data across four 
channels
 100-156 MHz Single Data Rate (SDR) 
parallel transmit interface with clock 
forwarding
 100-125 MHz SDR parallel receive 
interface
 Extensive control of loopback, BIST, 
and operating modes via 802.3 
compliant MDC/MDIO serial interface
 Built-in packet generator/checker
 IEEE 1149.1 JTAG testing support
 IEEE 802.3z Gigabit Ethernet and 
ANSI X3T11 Fibre Channel support
 High speed outputs which feature 
programmable output current to 
directly drive dual-terminated line
 2.5V, 0.25 micron CMOS technology 
with 3.3V tolerant I/O
 Direct interface to optical modules, 
coax, or serial backplanes
 Small footprint 19x19 mm, 289-pin 
PBGA
APPLICATIONS
 High speed serial backplanes
 Gigabit Ethernet links
 Fibre Channel links
 Intra-system interconnect
 ASIC to PMD link
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The QuadPHY
TM
 is a Quad PHYsical 
layer transceiver ideal for systems 
requiring large numbers of point-to-point 
gigabit links. It provides four individual 
serial channels capable of operation at 
up to 1.25 Gbps each, which may be 
grouped together to form a single 5.0 
Gbps bidirectional link. Each of the four 
primary channels has a corresponding 
secondary channel that can be enabled 
via the MDC/MDIO serial interface.
The QuadPHY includes 8B/10B block 
coding logic (compliant with 802.3z 
Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel 
requirements) which produces run length 
limited data streams for serial trans-
mission.
A receive FIFO optionally aligns all 
incoming parallel data to the local clock 
domain, adding or removing IDLE 
sequences as required. This simplifies 
implementation of the upstream ASIC by 
removing the requirement to deal with 
multiple clock domains.
When trunking is enabled, the QuadPHY 
can remove cable skew differences 
equivalent to several meters, presenting 
4-byte data vectors at the receive 
interface exactly as they were trans-
mitted.
EXAMPLE ARCHITECTURE
The first figure on the next page shows 
the QuadPHY in a switch application. 
This implementation uses four channels 
of 1.25 Gbaud per linecard, requiring 
only 16 signal pins per linecard and 64 
for the switch card, providing up to 
16 Gbps total payload capacity to the 
switch fabric.
The dotted lines in the figure depict the 
system clock domains. Note that even 
though the recovered clock from any or 
all serial links may be asynchronous to 
the local clock, the QuadPHY bridges-
these domains so that the switch fabric 
and linecards may be designed in only a 
single clock domain.
BLOCK DIAGRAM
FIFO
8B/10B
Encoder
10B/8B
Decoder
Clock 
Recovery
Clock Synthesizer
Common Control Logic 
REFCLK
PLL LOCK
MDC/MDIO
Serial
Management
Static Controls
Serial
Receive
Data
Serial
Transmit
Data
10
10
Parallel
Data In
TX Byte
Clock
Transmit Channel A (1 of 4)
Receive Channel A (1 of 4)
Parallel
Data Out
RX Byte
Clock
Serializer
PCS
PCS
Deserialize &
Byte Align
FIFO