The GEDEK paradigm

Twenty years ago, we invented at ALSE the concept and implementation of processor-less Ethernet communication. Our GEDEK IP became (and still is) extremely successful, allowing our customers to implement 100% efficient Ethernet communication on small and low cost FPGAs in a matter of hours. GEDEK is suitable for 1G or 100M link, works on any hardware and reaches the maximum theoretical bandwidth, both ways, without loss. Occupation-wise, GEDEK is extremely compact, doesn’t involve any processor and has no performance bottleneck. If you’re not familiar with the concept of our GEDEK IP, you can refer to our GEDEK Introduction document. We have ported the main concepts of GEDEK to 10G Ethernet.

10G Ethernet ???

10G Ethernet has quickly become available as a very affordable standard : if you have a desktop PC not supporting 10G Eth, you can buy a $50 10G Network Card and a $15 DAC (twinax) cable, and you can hook your PC to your FPGA board or Kit to exchange up to 1.2 GigaBytes/s with no loss (on the FPGA).

The link can be either short range using copper cables (typically up to 3m) or long to very long-reach optical fiber cables (also affordable).

And you don’t need any specific driver nor expensive software on your PC. Our API is very easy to use, and you can program your application in any language, including Python !

There are countless applications.

• An FPGA kit coupled with and ADC/DAC extension board turns your PC into a powerful and low cost Acquisition system
• Video (and Audio and Data) Streaming,
• Replacing USB links
• Alternative to PCIexpress
• Computer peripherals like Industrial printers, Industrial scanners, Imaging sensors…
• Imaging and video acquisition systems
• High Speed Data Acquisition, Transfer & Pattern Generation
• Driving thousands of actuators in real time (like in Deformable Mirrors)
• Remote Data Collection, Remote Control
• ETC…

… but …

Dealing with up to 1.2 GigaBytes per second with an embedded processor is not realistic (except maybe on the high end SoC FPGAs). With its hardware (processor-less) stack implementation, our 10GEDEK IP is the perfect solution, both for sending and for receiving without loss in the FPGA.

Modern desktop PCs can deal with this amount of traffic, but you’ll probably have to be cautious on this side : while our IP can generate and receive back-to-back frames with no loss, if the PC is busy with other tasks, it is not guaranteed to always cope. You may have to optimize your data processing software applications…

For what kind of FPGAs ?

ALSE’s 10GEDEK IP is available off-the-shelf for all Altera/Intel, AMD/Xilinx, Lattice and Microchip FPGAs that include 10G transceivers.

We have ready-to-use Reference Designs for a lot of FPGA kits from the various vendors above. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you don’t find a suitable one on this web site.

Want to know more ?

Take a look at the 10GEDEK Datasheet below.

Then you can fill in our Information Request Form and tell us about your application.