This document defines the functionality and behavior of the Sideband Interface responsible for connecting the Network Controller to the Management Controller. It also outlines the behavioral model of the network traffic destined for the Management Controller from the Network Controller.


This document defines the following two aspects of the Network Controller Sideband Interface (NC‑SI):



behavior of the interface, which include its operational states as well as the states of the associated components,
the payloads and commands of the communication protocol supported over the interface.

The scope of this document is limited to addressing only a single Management Controller communicating with one or more Network Controllers.


This document also defines the following aspects of a 3.3V RMII Based Transport (RBT) based physical medium:



transport binding for NC-SI over RBT,
electrical and timing requirements for the RBT,
an optional hardware arbitration mechanism for RBT.

Only the topics t...