Filter
Top Products
Intel
®
IXP400 Software
Programmer’s Guide IXP400 Software Version 2.0 April 2005
Document Number: 252539, Revision: 007 283
Access-Layer Components:
Time Sync (IxTimeSyncAcc) API 20
This chapter describes the Intel
®
IXP400 Software v2.0’s “Time Sync (IxTimeSyncAcc) API”
access-layer component.
The IxTimeSyncAcc access-layer component enables a client application, which implements the
IEEE 1588
*
Precision Time Protocol (PTP) to configure the IEEE 1588 Hardware Assist block on
the Intel
®
IXP46X Product Line of Network Processors.
20.1 What’s New
This is a new component for software release 2.0.
20.2 Introduction
The IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) is used to synchronize independent clocks running
in distributed network elements/nodes to a high degree of accuracy, in the microsecond to sub-
microsecond range. There are three main elements involved in supporting IEEE 1588 on the
IXP46X network processors:
• IEEE 1588 Hardware Assist block, available on the IXP46X network processors. The
hardware provides necessary features to allow timestamping of the IEEE 1588 PTP messages.
• IxTimeSyncAcc Access-Layer component, running on the Intel XScale
®
Core. This software
component provides the functionality required to enable the IEEE 1588 Hardware Assist block
on various MII ports, set and receive timestamps, receive and transfer interrupt requests to
client applications, and other functions.
• A IEEE 1588 PTP client application that would use the other two components to implement
and use PTP messages and timestamps according to the IEEE 1588 specifications.
Note: This client application is not provided as part of the IXP400 software.
These three elements are depicted in Figure 95.