A 0.54 pJ/b 20 Gb/s Ground-Referenced Single-Ended Short-Reach Serial Link in 28 nm CMOS for Advanced Packaging Applications

作者：Poulton John W^*; Dally William J; Chen Xi; Eyles John G; Greer Thomas H III; Tell Stephen G; Wilson John M; Gray C Thomas

来源：IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 2013, 48(12): 3206-3218.

DOI：10.1109/JSSC.2013.2279053

• Ground-referenced signaling
• high-speed I/O
• low-power I/O
• serial link
• transceiver

High-speed signaling over high density interconnect on organic package substrates or silicon interposers offers an attractive solution to the off-chip bandwidth limitation problem faced in modern digital systems. In this paper, we describe a signaling system co-designed with the interconnect to take advantage of the characteristics of this environment to enable a high-speed, low area, and low-power die to die link. Ground-Referenced Signaling (GRS) is a single-ended signaling system that eliminates the major problems traditionally associated with single-ended design by using the ground plane as the reference and signaling above and below ground. This design employs a novel charge pump driver that additionally eliminates the issue of simultaneous switching noise with data independent current consumption. Silicon measurements from a test chip implementing two 16-lane links, with forwarded clocks, in a standard 28 nm process demonstrate 20 Gb/s operation at 0.54 pJ/bit over 4.5 mm organic substrate channels at a nominal 0.9 V power supply voltage. Timing margins at the receiver are >0.3 UI at a BER of <10(-12). We estimate BER <10(-25) at the eye center.

• 出版日期2013-12