Distributed dynamic power savings for adaptive filters in a high-speed data channel

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

• a host interface for coupling to the host device;
• a line interface for coupling to the wireline channel medium;
• encoding/decoding circuitry operatively coupled to the host interface and the line interface for interfacing between the host device and the wireline channel medium;
• and
• adaptive filter circuitry operatively coupled to the encoding/decoding circuitry, the adaptive filter circuitry comprising:
• a plurality of filter taps, each filter tap in the plurality of filter taps corresponding to a segment of the cable length of the wireline channel medium, and being capable of being powered ON and OFF separately from each other filter tap in the plurality of filter taps, and adaptive control circuitry configured to:
• power ON a first subset of the plurality of filter taps, fewer than all of the filter taps, corresponding to segments distributed along the cable length of the wireline channel medium,
• monitor powered-ON filter taps for occurrence of interference events, and
• upon detection of an interference event at a segment to which a particular powered-ON filter tap corresponds, power ON one or more additional filter taps corresponding to one or more segments in a vicinity of segment to which the particular filter tap corresponds.