Patent ID: 7127645

Claim:
A skew compensation apparatus comprising: a transmitter for transmitting a parallel signal to a transmission line unit after converting the parallel signal into a plurality of serial signals; and a receiver for performing skew compensation for the serial signals received from the transmission line unit, said transmitter comprising means for demultiplexing an inputted parallel signal into a plurality of parallel signal groups, means for generating a skew compensation pattern, means for inserting said skew compensation pattern in each of the parallel signal groups outputted from said demultiplexing, means for converting the plurality of parallel signal groups each containing the skew compensation pattern into a plurality of serial signals, and a first interface for transmitting the serial signals to the transmission line unit, said receiver comprising a second interface for receiving the serial signals from the transmission line unit, means for demultiplexing the serial signals received by the second interface into parallel signal groups each containing said skew compensation pattern, a plurality of delay buffers for delaying the individual parallel signal groups outputted from the demultiplexing, and a delay controller for extracting the skew compensation pattern from each of said parallel signal groups outputted from the demultiplexing, wherein said delay controller controls a delay time in each of said delay buffers depending on a state of the extracted skew pattern.