Datasheet for Qualcomm Atheros AR8021

The Industry’s Smallest Single Port Gigabit Ethernet PHY Footprint

Atheros AR8021 Product Overview
The Atheros AR8021 is the industry’s smallest, single-port Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) PHY device. This highly integrated design offers a reduction of more than 60 percent in package size compared to competing solutions and features the industry’s smallest footprint in a 48-pin QFN package (6mm x 6mm). This industry-leading GbE PHY footprint results in the lowest bill-of-materials (BOM) cost on the market, significantly reducing price barriers to widespread adoption of GbE PHY technology in a wide range of computing and networking applications.
Atheros brings the company’s unmatched analog and mixed signal design expertise, to the GbE PHY market to achieve significant technical advantages. In addition to its compact size, the Atheros AR8021 delivers a rich set of features including:
• 10/100/1000 Mbps triple-speed transceiver with an RGMII interface
• Low power mode that leverages internal DSP power-saving schemes
• Easy-to-use Cable Diagnostic Test
The Atheros AR8021 GbE PHY serves a growing number of devices that benefit from Gigabit throughput including notebook and desktop PCs, wired and wireless routers, gateways, set-top boxes, printers, gaming platforms and network storage devices. The Gigabit performance effectively breaks the networking bottleneck caused by the increasing bandwidth requirements associated with converged triple-play applications – data, voice, and video – streaming throughout the home and business environments.