Patent ID: 7707234

Claim:
A method for determining a location of a predetermined N bit sequence in a data stream, comprising the steps of: (a) determining two N bit data words from consecutive bits of the data stream; (b) providing N, N bit comparators; (c) comparing a first N bits of the two N bit data words with the predetermined N bit data sequence by a first of the N comparators; (d) comparing a next N bits, starting at a second bit, of the two N bit data words with the predetermined N bit sequence by a second of the N bit comparators: and (e) repeating step (d), incrementing the starting bit, until N comparators have been employed and the first through N bits have been employed as the starting bit; (f) discarding first N bit data word when all N sequences N data bits as compared by one of the N comparators do not match the predetermined N bit sequence; (g) shifting the second N bit data word to become the first N bit data word; (h) determining a next N bit data word from next consecutive bits of the data stream to become the second N bit data word; and (i) performing steps (c)-(e) on the two current N bit data words.