Patent ID: 7957649

Claim:
An optical transceiver communicatively coupleable to a host computing system, the optical transceiver comprising: an opto-electric receiver configured to receive a first optical data signal and convert the optical signal to a first electrical data signal; an electro-optical transmitter configured to receive a second electrical data signal from the host and convert the second electrical data signal to a second optical data signal; a first electrical interface configured to receive the second electrical data signal from the host; a second electrical interface configured to receive a high-level command directly from the host; at least one processor; and a memory that is configured to include a high-level command memory location dedicated for the high-level command, wherein the at least one processor is configured to perform the following: an act of determining that the high-level command has been written to the high-level command memory location; an act of identifying the high-level command; and an act of executing a microcode portion corresponding to the high-level command, the microcode portion being structured such that, when executed by the at least one processor, the optical transceiver is caused to fulfill a function corresponding to the high-level command.