Patent Document ID: 7535844
Application ID: 10767234

Base Claim:
1. A method of processing data of a data communication channel, comprising: receiving a plurality of serial data signals from lanes of the communication channel; de-multiplexing serial data from each of the serial data signals received from the lanes and formatting the serial data into parallel data; checking the parallel data for a start-of-frame (SOF) character; responsive to detecting the SOF character, parsing the parallel data into invalid data and valid data, wherein valid data does not include control characters; basing the parsing of the parallel data at least in part on placement relative to the SOF character; packing the parsed valid data into a group of data; presenting the packed group of data; and activating an SOF sideband signal when beginning the presenting of the packed group of data; the SOF sideband signal being separate signaling from the packed group of data and presented in association with the packed group of data for sideband encapsulation.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: checking the parallel data for an end-of-frame (EOF) character; the parsing the parallel data to include: determining if a character of the parallel data is outside a frame bounded by the SOF character and the EOF character; and if the character is determined to be outside the frame, defining the character as being part of the invalid data.