Embodiments in the disclosure include a multi-protocol transceiver including a configurable arrangement of receive and/or transmit circuitry. An exemplary transceiver can be selectively configured to effectively transmit and/or receive data communications corresponding to a select one of a plurality of high-speed communication protocols. Another more particular embodiment disclosed includes a configurable data path through link-wide Physical Coding Sub-layer (“PCS”) circuitry including link-wide clock compensation, encoding/decoding, and scrambling/descrambling circuitry and lane striping/de-striping circuitry; the configurable data path further includes lane-wide circuitry including clock compensation, encoding/decoding, receive block sync, and Physical Medium Access sub-layer (“PMA”) circuitry, and further includes bit muxing/de-muxing circuitry coupled to Physical Medium Dependent (“PMD”) sub-layer circuitry.