Each transceiver channel is comprised of two major blocks, the physical medium attachment, or PMA, and the physical coding sub-layer, or PCS. The PMA is the circuitry that converts the differential electrical signal from the PCB to a digital signal, and then serializes the data. The physical coding sub-layer takes the serialized digital data from the PMA and performs the decoding or encoding, and protocol specific data reordering and buffering that must occur before entering the custom data processing IP in the FPGA fabric.