Patent ID: 7881341
Filing Date: 2011-02-01
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. An integrated circuit comprising: a reconfigurable media controller; a physical layer connector having an external physical interface to exchange data with an external device; a deserializer to receive a data stream from the physical layer connector, to synchronize to the data stream and to provide the data stream to the media controller; a frame recognition block coupled to the deserializer to receive the data stream received from the external device and coupled to determine a format of the data stream received from the external device prior to the media controller parsing the data stream; a configuration block coupled to load an appropriate configuration into the media controller to reconfigure software of the media controller so that the media controller can parse the data stream based on the format of the data stream determined by the frame recognition block; and a link layer controller coupled to the media controller and to a higher layer of the integrated circuit to exchange data between the media controller and the higher layer.