A Simple Ethernet Stack Implementation in VHDL to Enable FPGA Logic Reconfigurability

Ethernet is synonymous with networking and its application is ubiquitous worldwide. Its popularity is in part due to its high bandwidth over long cable lengths and a driver-less architecture within an operating system environment. Communication over Ethernet has associated complexity, both in terms of the physical hardware the networking stack interface requirements. Hence, it is of great interest when considering a hardware implementation, of how to incorporate the required hardware blocks and network stack operations into logic hardware to provide simple Ethernet communication. Intrinsic to the motivation for this paper is the hardware implementation of a network stack, which enables the use of Ethernet to send data and control packets to reconfigure interconnected logic. By incorporating specific Ethernet hardware available within current programmable logic devices and with verification undertaken in bespoke hardware, this work represents a first attempt at such an implementation.