A transceiver architecture supports high-speed communication over a signal lane (120-125) that extends between a high-performance integrated circuit (IC) (105) and one or more relatively low-performance ICs employing less sophisticated transmitters and receivers (110). The. architecture compensates for performance asymmetry between ICs communicating over a bidirectional lan by instantiating relatively complex transmit (Tx1) and receive (Rx1) equalization cir.cuitry on the higher-performance, side of the lane. Both the transmit and receive equalization filter coefficients in the higher-performance IC may be adaptively updated (162) based upon the signal response at the receiver of the higher-performance IC (Rx1N).