ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,566,891, issued on March 3, was assigned to Microchip Technology Inc. (Chandler, Ariz.).

"Higher-layer-processing data in time-sensitive data blocks at a physical-layer-interface device" was invented by Brian Branscomb (Hopkinton, Mass.), William Mahany (West Islip, N.Y.) and Sailesh Rupani (Telengana, India).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Examples of the present disclosure relate generally to implementing higher-layer processing on time-sensitive data blocks at a physical-layer-interface device. Some examples include logic to perform operations, the operations including providing data blocks to a physical-layer-interface device. The oper...