A MAC-PHY combines MAC and PHY in a single component for the simple Ethernet connection of edge nodes.

A MAC-PHY combines the Media Access Controller (MAC) and PHY in a single component. This makes it easier to connect even low-cost microcontrollers without their own Ethernet MAC to Ethernet—such as 10BASE-T1S. In the automotive context, this is especially interesting at the periphery, i.e., for sensor/actuator nodes, because the host connection is often implemented via a simple serial interface such as SPI and does not require a classic MII/RMII. For logging and prototyping, this means that many edge nodes today no longer “speak” Ethernet only through separate PHY+MAC combinations, but through compact MAC-PHY solutions.