Patent ID: 8238413

Claim:
An adaptive equalizer for high-speed serial data, comprising: a programmable equalizer for equalizing an input serial data signal to generate an equalized serial data signal, wherein the equalization is based on an optimal equalization mode; a signal quality meter for computing an eye width indication based on the equalized serial data signal, wherein the eye width indication is an indicative of the quality of the equalized serial data signal, the a signal quality meter includes: a clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit for recovering the equalized serial data signal using a number of N over-samplers and a N-phase sampling clock; a number of N transition detectors connected to the number of N over-samplers for detecting rise or fall transitions occur at each phase sample; a number of N counters connected to the N transition detectors for counting the number of transitions during a programmable counting period; a number of N comparators connected to the N counters for comparing the number of transactions counted by each counter to a programmable threshold, wherein the comparison results determine the location of each phase sample relatively to an eye of an eye diagram; a pattern analyzer for generating the eye width indication by identifying a longest sequence of contiguous phase samples inside an eye of the eye diagram; a timer for timing the programmable counting period; and a decision unit for determining the optimal equalization mode based on the eye width indication.