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

Abstract

A physical layer transceiver for a wireline channel medium includes a host interface to a host device, a line interface to the medium, encoding/decoding circuitry for interfacing between the host device and the medium, and adaptive filter circuitry coupled to the encoding/decoding circuitry. The adaptive filter circuitry includes a plurality of filter taps, each corresponding to a segment of the medium, and capable of being powered ON and OFF separately from each other filter tap. Adaptive control circuitry can power ON a first subset, fewer than all the filter taps, corresponding to segments distributed along the medium, monitor powered-ON filter taps for occurrence of interference events, and upon detection of an interference event at a particular 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 the particular segment.