Flexible high speed forward error correction (FEC) physical medium attachment (PMA) and physical coding sublayer (PCS) connection system

1. A soft-IP transmitter interface comprising:

a Reed-Solomon encoder operating according to any one of a plurality of bus width and bandwidth parameter pairs;

a gearbox module comprising a plurality of gearboxes, the plurality of gearboxes:

receiving input data at a bus width and clock rate parameter pair specified by the transmitter interface; and

converting the input data into output data according to a number of physical lanes and bandwidth parameter pair specified by a physical medium attachment (PMA) standard; and

a transcoding encoder receiving, as input, block data from a plurality of virtual lanes according to a round-robin allocation.

2. The soft-IP transmitter interface of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of bus width and bandwidth parameter pairs comprises a bus width of 66 symbols and a clock rate of 156.3 MHz, a bus width of 44 symbols and a clock rate of 234.4 MHz, a bus width of 33 symbols and a clock rate of 312.5 MHz, and a bus width of 22 symbols and a clock rate of 468.8 MHz.

3. The soft-IP transmitter interface of claim 1 , wherein the PMA standard specifies the number of physical lanes to be four physical lanes and bandwidth parameter of 25.78 Gigabits per second per physical lane.

4. The soft-IP transmitter interface of claim 1 , wherein a bus width specified by the transmitter interface is not divisible by a total number of physical lanes included in the gearbox module.

5. The soft-IP transmitter interface of claim 4 , wherein the plurality of gearboxes comprises a first subplurality of gearboxes and a second subplurality of gearboxes, wherein, during even clock cycles:

each gearbox in the first subplurality of gearboxes outputs a total number of N bits; and

each gearbox in the second subplurality of gearboxes outputs a total number of N+1 bits.

6. The soft-IP transmitter interface of claim 5 , wherein, during odd clock cycles:

each gearbox in the first subplurality of gearboxes outputs a total number N+1 of bits; and

each gearbox in the second subplurality of gearboxes outputs a total number N of bits.

7. A method for configuring a physical coding sublayer (PCS) interface of an integrated circuit device, the method comprising:

determining a device size or area requirement for a portion of the integrated circuit;

selecting a plurality of operating parameters of the PCS interface based on the device size or area requirement; and

configuring the PCS interface based on the plurality of operating parameters, wherein the configuring comprises determining if a bus width of the PCS interface is divisible by a total number of physical lanes present in the PCS interface.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the plurality of operating parameters comprises a maximum bandwidth parameter for the PCS interface.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the maximum bandwidth parameter is selected from the group consisting of 156.3 MHz, 234.4 MHz, 312.5 MHz, and 468.8 MHz.

10. The method of claim 7 , wherein the device size or area requirement is a bus width of an encoder or decoder included in the integrated circuit.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the bus width is selected from the group consisting of 22 symbols, 33 symbols, 44 symbols, and 66 symbols.

12. The method of claim 7 , wherein configuring the PCS interface comprises configuring the gearboxes present in the PCS interface in an elastic gearbox design in response to a determination that the bus width of the PCS interface is not divisible by the number of gearboxes present in the PCS interface.

13. A soft-IP receiver interface comprising:

a Reed-Solomon decoder operating according to any one of a plurality of bus width and bandwidth parameter pairs;

a gearbox module comprising a plurality of gearboxes, the plurality of gearboxes:

receiving input data on a number of physical lanes and at a bandwidth per physical lane specified by a physical medium attachment (PMA) standard; and

converting the input data into output data at a bus width and a clock rate specified by the receiver interface; and

a transcoding decoder processing block data from a plurality of virtual lanes according to a round-robin allocation.

14. The soft-IP receiver interface of claim 13 , wherein the plurality of bus width and bandwidth parameter pairs comprises a bus width of 66 symbols and a clock rate of 156.3 MHz, a bus width of 44 symbols and a clock rate of 234.4 MHz, a bus width of 33 symbols and a clock rate of 312.5 MHz, and a bus width of 22 symbols and a clock rate of 468.8 MHz.

15. The soft-IP receiver interface of claim 13 , wherein the PMA standard specifies the number of physical lanes to be four physical lanes and bandwidth parameter of 25.78 Gigabits per second per physical lane.

16. The soft-IP receiver interface of claim 13 , wherein a bus width specified by the receiver interface is not divisible by a total number of physical lanes included in the gearbox module.

17. The soft-IP receiver interface of claim 16 , wherein the plurality of gearboxes comprises a first subplurality of gearboxes and a second subplurality of gearboxes, wherein, during even clock cycles:

each gearbox in the first subplurality of gearboxes outputs a total number of N bits; and

each gearbox in the second subplurality of gearboxes outputs a total number of N+1 bits.

18. The soft-IP receiver interface of claim 17 , wherein, during odd clock cycles:

each gearbox in the first subplurality of gearboxes outputs a total number N+1 of bits; and

each gearbox in the second subplurality of gearboxes outputs a total number N of bits.