Ethernet physical layer transceiver with non-linear neural network equalizers

A physical layer transceiver for connecting a host device to a wireline channel medium, the physical layer transceiver comprising:

• a host interface for coupling to the host device;
• a line interface for coupling to the wireline channel medium;
• a transmit path operatively coupled to the host interface and the line interface, including circuitry for encoding host data and driving multi-level encoded host data onto the wireline channel medium;
• a receive path operatively coupled to the line interface and the host interface, including circuitry for decoding multi-level data received from the wireline channel medium and passing the decoded data to the host interface;
• adaptive filter circuitry operatively coupled to at least one of the transmit path and the receive path for filtering signals on the at least one of the transmit path and the receive path, the adaptive filter circuitry comprising a non-linear equalizer;
• and
• adaptation circuitry configured to compare output of the adaptive filter circuitry to known data, and to adapt the adaptive filter circuitry, by adjusting parameters of the adaptive filter circuitry, based on cross-entropy between a respective multi-bit symbol and a log-likelihood ratio corresponding to the respective multi-bit symbol.