System and method for improving equalization in a high speed serdes environment

A program storage device readable by a computer, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the computer to perform a method for tuning each channel of a high-speed SerDes link interface arranged in a configuration linking a local side to a remote side, the method comprising:

• transmitting a flow control packet from the local side to the remote side to change remote side transmission characteristics in a link channel;
• monitoring the bit error rate (BER) in the link channel;
• transferring additional flow control packets to adjust the remote side transmission characteristics;
• and
• processing the BER data at the local side to generate the remote side transmission characteristics for the link channel.

A system for tuning each channel of a high-speed SerDes link interface arranged in a configuration linking a local side to a remote side comprising:

• a local side physical layer including:
• a local side transmitter;
• a local side receiver electrically connected to the local side transmitter;
• a local side serializer electrically connected to an output of the local side transmitter;
• a local side deserializer electrically connected to an input of the local side receiver;
• and
• a local side adaptive pre-emphasis logic block coupled between the local side transmitter and the local side receiver and configured to receive an indication of a bit error rate for a channel of the high-speed SerDes cable link and to create based thereon coefficients to be applied to a remote side serializer.