Patent ID: 8386857

Claim:
A test and measurement instrument, comprising: an input to receive a signal under test; a memory to store digitized data including a reference test pattern and a beginning sequence; a pattern detector to detect the beginning sequence in the signal under test and generate a synchronization signal in response; a memory controller to cause the memory to output the reference test pattern responsive to the synchronization signal; a symbol comparator to compare the reference test pattern from the memory with the signal under test; one or more 8b to 10b converters to receive the signal under test from the input and the digitized data from the memory, and to convert the received data from an 8b coded format to a 10b coded format; and a bit comparator coupled to the one or more 8b to 10b converters, the bit comparator configured to compare the 10b coded reference test pattern with the 10b coded signal under test.