Patent ID: 7148825

Claim:
A data interface comprises: a network interface processor operably coupled to transceive parallel data via a network connection; a transmitter operably coupled to convert outbound parallel data from the network interface processor into serial transmit data; and a receiver operably coupled to convert serial receive data into inbound parallel data, wherein the receiver provides the inbound parallel data to the network interface processor, wherein at least one of the network interface processor, the transmitter, and the receiver includes a Gray-code counter that functions to: determine a desired Gray-code sequence length, N, that is an even whole number; determine a bus width, M, in bits, based on the desired Gray-code sequence length, to represent the generated Gray-code, wherein 2 M is greater than or equal to N; determine a set of skipped binary values based on a binary increment-decrement algorithm to obtain the non-power-of-two set of binary values; and represent the non-power-of-two set of binary values as a set of equivalent Gray-code values.