Introduction

VelocityDRIVE-SP is a software product implemented by Microchip offering firmware for selected Microchip Ethernet Switches.

Here are some of the important characteristics of VelocityDRIVE-SP:

  1. Targeting automotive and industrial markets.

  2. Designed for safety and security.

  3. Software for constrained environments.

    1. The supported switch families typically have on-chip SRAM, and VelocityDRIVE-SP is designed to fit in this memory, not requiring any external DDR.

    2. The LAN969x family of SoCs has 2MB of on-chip memory SRAM, which is enough to host the full system.

  4. YANG-based management interface

    1. The stack implements a CoAP server and on top of this a CORECONF server implementing the relevant YANG modules from IETF and IEEE.

  5. Typical L2 protocols ready to use:

    1. Basic IP stack for IP-based management, PTP, LACP, IPv4 static routing, etc.

1. What is VelocityDRIVE

VelocityDRIVE is the name of a family of related products. Besides VelocityDRIVE-SP, which is documented in detail in this material, the family also contains VelocityDRIVE-CT, which is a PC tool capable of managing switches running VelocityDRIVE-SP using the CORECONF/YANG interface.

2. License

The material presented here is copyright (2025) owned by Microchip Technology Inc. and its subsidiaries and released under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 license, unless other terms are stated for individual pages.

Examples of cases where other licenses apply are in the YANG files provided by IETF and IEEE.

The full license can be seen here: CC-BY-SA-4.0.txt.

3. Audience

This material is intended for Microchip customers using VelocityDRIVE-SP binary firmware images.

The typical use scenarios are:

  1. Potential Microchip customers evaluating a Switch SoC on an EVB with VelocityDRIVE-SP pre-installed.

  2. Customers who have licensed VelocityDRIVE-SP binaries and are tailoring it for their own board which may differ from the Microchip EVBs.

  3. Customers who have already evaluated VelocityDRIVE-SP and are now in the process of integrating it into their network, monitoring, and management system.

  4. Customers who have licensed VelocityDRIVE-SP sources, but still need documentation on how to use the binaries generated from these sources.

This material is not intended to be used directly by third parties to Microchip (customers of Microchip customers).

4. Product Context

VelocityDRIVE-SP binaries include all the firmware needed on a single switch. This firmware facilitates booting the switch, applying configuration, running protocols, and allowing the switch to be managed.

In this material, a switch is defined as the entire "board" or "box" which includes the Switch-SoC, PHYs, flash, etc. This is illustrated in the figure below.

intro cxt

But, for switches to be useful, they need to be connected to a network and forward traffic. This network needs to be designed, built/implemented, monitored, etc. The entire network design and network management is out of scope of this material.

The configuration guides may in some places show diagrams and configurations of networks containing multiple nodes, but the overall focus in this material is on a single DUT, and let the reader use this information to design complete networks.

5. Document Overview

This document contains the following parts:

  • Getting Started: Basic but important steps to help new users get started using one of the supported evaluation boards.

  • YANG Catalog: The YANG catalog offers a complete reference of all YANG elements implemented in a given firmware release. The YANG catalog is provided as an attachment (right click to download) here.

  • Configuration Guides: This part focuses on the CORECONF/YANG management interface. Most of the material here is focused on network configuration and status, and it provides a good amount of example configuration which can be applied and evaluated directly on the evaluation boards.

  • Supported EVBs: This part enumerates the supported EVBs, and also provides most of the information which is specific to a given SoC family or board. This includes, but is not limited to, dip-switches, flashing/de-brick instructions, features/capabilities of a given board, etc.

  • Software Tailoring: This part is only intended for customers who are designing their own boards and need to tailor the software to run on this board.

  • Software Debugging: This covers some basic debugging mechanisms built into the software stack. Be aware that we recommend all debug options to be disabled in production use.

  • Support Tools: This part covers a bunch of support tools which can be used to interact with the switch firmware.

  • Technology: This part provides more in-depth background information on the technology used in the embedded firmware. This is intended for customers who want a more detailed understanding and/or for customers who want to implement their own client tools/libraries.