General Description
The RTL8196C is an integrated System-on-a-Chip (SoC) Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) that implements a basic L2 5-port Ethernet switch and a high performance CPU. The embedded RISC CPU is an RLX4181, and the clock rate can be up to 400MHz. To improve computational performance, a 16-Kbyte I-Cache, 8-Kbyte D-Cache, 16-K I-MEM, and 8-Kbyte D-MEM are provided. A standard 5-signal P1149.1 compliant EJTAG test interface is supported for CPU testing and software development.

FEATUREs
■ SOC
   ◆ Embedded RISC CPU, RLX4181 with
      16K I-Cache, 8K D-Cache, 16K I-MEM,
      8K D-MEM
   ◆ Supports MIPS-1 ISA, MIPS16 ISA
   ◆ Clock rate up to 400MHz
   ◆ Provides a standard 5-signal P1149.1
      EJTAG test port
   ◆ Supports RLX4181 CPU suspend mode
■ L2 Capabilities
   ◆ Five Ethernet MAC integrated switch
      with five 10M/100Mbps physical layers
      and transceivers for IEEE 802.3
      10Base-T and 100Base-TX
   ◆ Non-blocking wire-speed reception and
      transmission and non-head-of-line
      blocking/forwarding
   ◆ Internal 512Kbit SRAM for packet
      buffering
   ◆ Internal 1024 entry 4-way hash L2 look
      up table
   ◆ Supports source and destination MAC
      address filtering
   ◆ Supports IEEE 802.1x port-based and
      MAC-based Network Access Control
   ◆ Complies with
      IEEE 802.3/802.3u/802.1q/802.1d
   ◆ Flexible full-duplex 802.3x flow control
      and optional half-duplex backpressure
      flow control
   ◆ MAC learning supports Shared VLAN
      Learning (SVL) and Independent VLAN
      Learning (IVL) modes
■ CPU Interface (NIC)
   ◆ Supports BSD mbuf-like packet structure
      with adjustable cluster size (128-byte to
      2Kbyte) to provide optimum memory
      utilization
   ◆ Provides the ‘To-CPU reason’ in the
      packet header to facilitate packet
      processing
   ◆ The NIC DMA supports multiple
      descriptor-ring architecture for QoS
      applications (supports 6 RX descriptor
      rings and 2 TX descriptor rings)
■ Peripheral Interfaces
   ◆ Supports one PCI Express Host with
      integrated PHY
   ◆ Supports one 16550 UART
   ◆ Supports up to 17 GPIO pins
   ◆ Supports one-port USB 2.0 host interface
   ◆ Embedded USB PHY
■ Memory Interfaces
   ◆ Flash (NOR Type)
      ■ Supports two Flash banks that can be
         configured as 8/16-bit bus, 256k/512k
         /1M/2M/4M/8M bytes
      ■ System supports up to 16Mbyte Flash
         memory space
      ■ Boot up from NOR Flash is supported
   ◆ Flash (SPI Type)
      ■ Supports 4 channels for SPI Flash
         application
      ■ Boot up from SPI Flash is supported
      ■ System supports up to 32Mbyte Flash
         memory space
        
   ◆ SDRAM
      ■ Supports two SDRAM banks that can
         be configured as 2M/4M/8M/16M/
         32M/64Mbyte
      ■ 16-bit SDRAM data bus is supported.
         System totally supports up to
         128Mbyte SDRAM memory space
■ Supports Green Ethernet
   ◆ Cable length power saving
   ◆ Power down power saving
   ◆ Supports IEEE 802.3az Draft 2.0 Energy
      Efficient Ethernet (EEE) for
      100Base-TX in full duplex operation,
      and 10Base-T in full/half duplex mode
■ Other Add-on-Value Features
   ◆ Supports Link down power saving in
      Ethernet PHY
   ◆ Supports two hardware timers and one
      watchdog timer
   ◆ Per-port configurable auto-crossover
      function
   ◆ Single 25MHz crystal or 40MHz clock
      input
   ◆ PQFP 128-pin package