The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association publishes an IEEE Standard for Ethernet, IEEE Std 802.3-2015, which will be familiar to those of ordinary skill in the art to which this application pertains. This standard provides a common media access control specification for local area network (LAN) operations at selected speeds from 1 Mb/s to 100 Gb/s over coaxial cable, twisted wire pair cable, fiber optic cable, and electrical backplanes, with various channel signal constellations. As demand continues for ever-higher data rates, extensions to the standard must account for increased channel attenuation and dispersion even as the equalizers are forced to operate an ever-higher symbol rates, to the point that receiver power consumption and dissipation is expected to reach prohibitive levels. A different architecture may be needed to resolve this issue.