Patent ID: 6871301

Claim:
A system for deskewing serial data received at a plurality of independent devices, each device coupled to receive a single serial XAUI lane, with a Master device coupled to a selected XAUI lane and slave devices coupled to remaining XAUI lanes, the system comprising: a two-wire bus, having a first wire and a second wire; an alignment character detecting unit included in each device, with the alignment character detecting unit for indicating when an alignment character is detected in serial data received at the device; an Align_Character signal assertion unit, included in the Master device, and coupled to the alignment character detecting unit and to the first wire, for asserting the Align_Character signal when an alignment character is detected in serial data received from the selected XAUI lane; and a deskew unit in each slave device, coupled to the first wire, the second wire, and to the alignment character detecting unit, for decoding the Align_Char signal to determine whether its received data is skewed relative to data received at the master, and if the data is skewed, slipping its datapath to deskew the data and asserting an Error_Ind signal on the second wire.