Patent 7206981 was granted and assigned to Intel on April, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In some embodiments, a chip comprising transmitters, local receivers, and control circuitry to determine whether the transmitters are coupled to remote receivers through interconnects. If certain conditions are met the control circuitry causes the transmitters to transmit a compliance test pattern on the interconnects. The conditions include that the control circuitry determines that the remote receivers are coupled to the transmitters and the local receivers have not received signals within a particular time. Other embodiments are described and claimed.