Bit 13 of the Network Configuration register is the pause enable control for reception. If this bit is set, transmission will pause if a non zero pause quantum frame is received.
If a valid pause frame is received then the Pause Time register is updated with the new frame's pause time, regardless of whether a previous pause frame is active or not. An interrupt (either bit 12 or bit 13 of the Interrupt Status register) is triggered when a pause frame is received, but only if the interrupt has been enabled (bit 12 and bit 13 of the Interrupt Mask register). Pause frames received with non zero quantum are indicated through the interrupt bit 12 of the Interrupt Status register. Pause frames received with zero quantum are indicated on bit 13 of the Interrupt Status register.
Once the Pause Time register is loaded and the frame currently being transmitted has been sent, no new frames are transmitted until the pause time reaches zero. The loading of a new pause time, and hence the pausing of transmission, only occurs when the GMAC is configured for full duplex operation. If the GMAC is configured for half duplex there will be no transmission pause, but the pause frame received interrupt will still be triggered. A valid pause frame is defined as having a destination address that matches either the address stored in Specific Address register 1 or if it matches the reserved address of 0x0180C2000001. It must also have the MAC control frame type ID of 0x8808 and have the pause opcode of 0x0001.
Pause frames that have frame check sequence (FCS) or other errors will be treated as invalid and will be discarded. 802.3 Pause frames that are received after Priority-based Flow Control (PFC) has been negotiated will also be discarded. Valid pause frames received will increment the pause frames received statistic register.
The pause time register decrements every 512 bit times once transmission has stopped. For test purposes, the retry test bit can be set (bit 12 in the Network Configuration register) which causes the Pause Time register to decrement every GTXCK cycle once transmission has stopped.
The interrupt (bit 13 in the Interrupt Status register) is asserted whenever the Pause Time register decrements to zero (assuming it has been enabled by bit 13 in the Interrupt Mask register). This interrupt is also set when a zero quantum pause frame is received.