An example method of capturing an error distribution data for a serial channel includes: receiving a signal from the serial channel at a receiver in an integrated circuit (IC), the signal encoding data using pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) scheme having more than two levels; determining a plurality of symbols from the signal, each of the plurality of symbols encoding a plurality of bits; comparing the plurality of symbols with a plurality of expected symbols to detect a plurality of symbol errors; generating the error distribution data by accumulating numbers of the plurality of symbol errors across a plurality of bins based error type; and transmitting the error distribution data from the receiver to a computing system for processing.