Highly Efficient Single-Chip 10/100 Ethernet Controller with HP Auto-MDIX
Datasheet
Chapter 1 General Description
The LAN9215 is a full-featured, single-chip 10/100 Ethernet controller designed for embedded
applications where performance, flexibility, ease of integration and system cost control are required.
The LAN9215 has been architected to provide the best price-performance ratio for any 16-bit
application with medium performance requirements. The LAN9215 is fully IEEE 802.3 10BASE-T and
802.3u 100BASE-TX compliant, and supports HP Auto-MDIX.
The LAN9215 includes an integrated Ethernet MAC and PHY with a high-performance SRAM-like
slave interface. The simple, yet highly functional host bus interface provides a glue-less connection to
most common 16-bit microprocessors and microcontrollers as well as 32-bit microprocessors with a
16-bit external bus. The LAN9215 includes large transmit and receive data FIFOs to accommodate
high latency applications. In addition, the LAN9215 memory buffer architecture allows the most efficient
use of memory resources by optimizing packet granularity.
Applications
The LAN9215 is well suited for many medium-performance embedded applications, including:
Printers, kiosks, POS terminals and security systems
Audio distribution systems
General embedded systems
Basic cable, satellite and IP set-top boxes
Voice-over-IP solutions
The LAN9215 also supports features which reduce or eliminate packet loss. Its internal 16-KByte
SRAM can hold over 200 received packets. If the receive FIFO gets too full, the LAN9215 can
automatically generate flow control packets to the remote node, or assert back-pressure on the remote
node by generating network collisions.
The LAN9215 supports numerous power management and wakeup features. The LAN9215 can be
placed in a reduced power mode and can be programmed to issue an external wake signal via several
methods, including “Magic Packet”, “Wake on LAN” and “Link Status Change”. This signal is ideal for
triggering system power-up using remote Ethernet wakeup events. The device can be removed from
the low power state via a host processor command.
SMSC LAN9215
DATASHEET
9
Revision 1.5 (07-18-06)
SMSC [ SMSC CORPORATION ]
