Patent 7152136 was granted and assigned to Altera on December, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Methods and apparatus are provided for providing PCI Express support. A device includes a hard-coded transceiver configured to support protocols such as Fibre Channel and the 10 Gigabit Attachment Unit Interface (XAUI), but the transceiver does not fully support PCI Express. Interface circuitry is configured to supplement or replace hard-coded transceiver components to provide PCI Express support. Interface circuitry allows PCI Express cores to operate with the transceiver that does not fully support PCI Express.