Alignment and deskew device, system and method
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsHeiko Woelk, Aage Fischer, Nils Hoffmann
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A device, system and method for aligning data received on a plurality of data lanes in a data link are disclosed. One or more alignment vectors are generated for each of a plurality of data lanes where each alignment vector represents a location of an alignment character in an associated one of the data lanes. For each data lane, a plurality of alignment vectors may be associated with one or more alignment windows associated with the data lane. If the alignment vectors of the data lanes are associated with a common alignment window, an alignment position may be selected for each data lane.
Claims27
A method comprising:
- generating one or more alignment vectors for each of a plurality of data lanes, each alignment vector comprising information representing a location of an alignment character in an associated one of the data lanes;
- for each data lane, associating a plurality of alignment vectors generated from the data lane to identify one or more alignment windows associated with the data lane;
- associating respective alignment windows associated with the data lanes to detect a common alignment window;
- and
- determining an alignment position from among a plurality of alignment positions for each data lane in response to detecting the common alignment window.
An apparatus for deskewing data lanes comprising:
- an alignment search circuit to associate a plurality of alignment vectors of each data lane to identify one or more alignment windows associated with the data lane, each alignment vector comprising information representing a location of an alignment character in an associated one of the data lanes, and to detect a common alignment window among alignment windows associated with the respective data lanes;
- and
- an alignment sort circuit to determine, for each data lane, an alignment position from among a plurality of alignment positions in response to detecting the common alignment window.
A system comprising:
- a first extended sublayer circuit coupled to an MII to generate a plurality of data lanes;
- and
- a second extended sublayer circuit comprising:
- a decoder circuit to generate one or more alignment vectors for each of the data lanes, each alignment vector comprising information representing a location of an alignment character in an associated one of the data lanes;
- an alignment search circuit to associate a plurality of alignment vectors of each data lane to identify one or more alignment windows associated with the data lane, and to detect a common alignment window among alignment windows associated with the respective data lanes;
- and
- an alignment sort circuit to determine, for each data lane, an alignment position from among a plurality of alignment positions in response to detecting the common alignment window.
A system comprising:
- a link layer device;
- and
- a physical layer device coupled to the link layer device by a system packet interface (SPI) comprising a plurality of data lanes, the physical layer device comprising:
- an alignment search circuit to associate a plurality of alignment vectors of each data lane to identify one or more alignment windows associated with the data lane, and to detect a common alignment window among alignment windows associated with the respective data lanes;
- and
- an alignment sort circuit to determine, for each data lane, an alignment position from among a plurality of alignment positions in response to detecting the common alignment window.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.