RTL8186/RTL8186P Original and new Dual-Band Tri-Mode Wireless Gateway SoC

The RTL8186/RTL8186P is a highly integrated System-on-a-Chip with a high-performance 32-bit RISC micro-controller, two Ethernet MACs, and a WLAN controller embedded onto a single chip with a space-saving total package size of 17mm x 17mm. It is a cost-effective solution for wireless LAN access points, wireless SOHO routers, wireless multimedia appliance, etc.

The embedded 32-bit RISC CPU runs at up to 180MHz and features separate 8K instruction and data caches. The processor pipeline is a dual-issue 6-stage architecture; the CPU fetches two instructions per cycle, allowing two instructions to be executed concurrently in two pipes for an up to 30% performance improvement over uni-scalar architecture.

The RTL8186/RTL8186P features two fast Ethernet MACs; one perhaps used for a LAN interface and the other connected to a WAN port. An IEEE 802.11a/b/g WLAN MAC and base-band processor is embedded. By interfacing with an external RF module of Realtek, the RTL8186/RTL8186P provides a total solution for 2.4GHz or 5G.Hz WLAN systems.

To support emergence of VPN applications and the latest test criteria of ICSA, RTL8186RTL8186P incorporates a full function SH1/MD5/DES/3DES/AES-128 crypto engine. The crypto engine offloads the packet authentication/encryption/decryption job with just a single pass of DMA, achieving high performance when IPSEC is deployed in the system.

The RTL8186/RTL8186P provides a glueless interface for external SDRAM and flash memory devices. It allows customers to use 1MB to 64MB SDRAM/flash memory with 16-bit or 32-bit variable length in great flexibility. The RTL8186/RTL8186P also supports NOR and NAND type flash, and system booting from the NAND type flash is at no extra cost.

Additionally, The RTL8186/RTL8186P provides UART, PCI, and PCM interfaces as well as up to 58 GPIO (General Purpose I/O) pins. With the PCM interface, wireless VoIP applications are made possible.

• Core Processor
  • 32-bit RISC processor compatible to MIPS R3000 ISA-1 architecture
  • Super-scalar architecture, containing 2 execution pipelines with better performance
  • Embedded with 8K I-Cache, 8K D-Cache, 4K I-RAM and 4K D-RAM
  • 16-entry MMU supported
  • Up to 180MHZ operating frequency
• WLAN Controller
  • Integrated IEEE 802.11a/b/g complied MAC and DSSS Baseband processor
  • Data rate of 54M, 48M, 36M, 24M, 18M, 12M, 9M, 6M, 11M, 5.5M, 2M and 1M
  • Support antenna diversity and AGC
  • Support 802.11h DFS and TPC
  • Support 802.11i standard with embedded encryption/decryption engine for 64 bits/128 bits WEP, TKIP/MIC and AES
  • RF interface to Realtek 2.4G and 5G RF ICs
• Fast Ethernet Controller
  • Fully compliant with IEEE 802.3/802.3u
  • Supports MII interface with full and half duplex capability
  • Supports descriptor-based buffer management with scatter-gather capability
  • Supports IP, TCP, and UDP checksum offload
  • Supports IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging and 802.1P priority queue
  • Supports full duplex flow control (IEEE 802.3X)
• UART
  • 2 UART interfaces
  • 16550 compatible
  • 16 bytes FIFO size
  • Auto CTS/RTS flow control
• Memory Controller
  • Supports external 16/32-bit SDRAM with 2 banks access, up to 32M bytes for each bank
  • Supports two external 16-bit NOR-type Flash memory, up to 8M bytes for each bank
  • Supports two external 8-bit NAND-type Flash memory, up to 32M bytes for each bank
  • Support boot from NAND type to reduce total BOM cost
• IPSEC Crypto Engine
  • Supports DES, 3DES and AES-128 encryption/decryption algorithm for ESP encryption with throughput up to 120Mbps
  • Supports HMAC-MD5 and HMAC-SHA-1 authentication algorithms
  • Supports CBC or EBC mode with DES/3DES/AES algorithm
  • A 32-bit PRNG (pseudo random number generator)
  • Single pass for both authentication and encryption/decryption
• PCI Bridge
  • Complies with PCI 2.2
  • Supports four external PCI devices
  • Supports PCI master/slave mode with shared IRQ
  • 3.3 and 5V I/O tolerance
  • One of the PCI device supports memory mapping space up to 16M bytes, others up 1M bytes
• GPIO
  • 11 dedicate programmable I/O ports and 58 shared GPIO ports
  • Individually configurable to input, output and edge transition
• Watchdog/Timer/Counter
  • Hardware watchdog timer, used to reset the processor if the system hangs
  • 4 sets of general timers/counter
• EJTAG
  • Use standard IEEE 1149.1 JTAG interface for software debugging
• PCM
  • Supports 4 audio channels
  • Supports bus master mode
  • Supports G.711 u-law and a-law
• Package
  • RTL8186: 208-pin PQFP; RTL8186P: 292-pin TFBGA

• Wireless Access Point
• Wireless SOHO Router
• Wireless VPN Router
• Wireless Printer Server
• Wireless CE Appliance