Patent ID: 8064494

Claim:
A device operable to determine a last finger on a channel, comprising: a memory unit operative to store state information for the channel and state information for a plurality of fingers on the channel; and a last finger determination (LFD) unit operative to poll, during a cycle, a finger newly activated without polling fingers previously activated, determine whether or not the polled finger is the last finger on the channel based on the state information for the channel and the state information for the polled finger, and indicate whether the polled finger is determined to be the last finger on the channel; wherein the LFD unit determines that the polled finger is the last finger in the cycle when one of the following occurs: (1) the polled finger is that finger that was the last finger in a previous cycle; (2) the polled finger is later than the last finger in the previous cycle based on relative positions of an output buffer pointer for the polled finger and an output buffer pointer for the last finger in the previous cycle; and (3) all fingers on the channel have been polled and no other finger on the channel is indicated as the last finger.