Integrated physical coding sublayer and forward error correction in networking applications

摘要

Techniques for receiving data at a physical coding sublayer (PCS) transmit structure from a media access control (MAC) sublayer are provided. A PCS transmit structure is configured to receive data from a MAC sublayer, the PCS transmit structure comprising a first FEC hardware module that inserts one or more alignment markers in the data and performs FEC encoding, in a first clock domain, on the one or more alignment markers and the data to generate FEC encoded data. Further, a PCS receive structure configured to receive the FEC encoded data from the PCS transmit structure, the PCS receive structure comprising a second FEC hardware module is configured to perform FEC decoding, in the second clock domain, on the FEC encoded data to generate FEC decoded data, and remove the one or more alignment markers from the FEC decoded data.