Patent ID: 7200138

Claim:
A physical medium dependent (PMD) transport subsystem for use in connection with the movement of data objects within a communications system processing a stream of communications data in connection with a remote communications system, the PMD transport subsystem comprising: transport control means coordinating a first transfer of receive data from the stream of communications data; wherein said receive data is transferred from a bus interface means coupled to the transport control means for reception by a software-based processing device also coupled to the transport control means; said transport control means further coordinating a second transfer of an input machine readable data object from said bus interface means to PMD processing circuitry within the PMD transport subsystem; said input machine readable data object consisting of a structure incorporating a parameter portion and a structured data portion, said input machine readable data object being based in part on said receive data; wherein the PMD transport subsystem performs a hardware-based computation in connection with a stream of communications data; and wherein said receive data is received from a communications port by way of a DSL link bus (DSL Link), said DSL Link comprising a plurality of data lines, a word clock line, and a bit clock line, said DSL Link enabling embedded operations control information transfers between one or more analog front ends and the PMD transport subsystem.