A Clock Synchronizer for Repeaterless Low Swing On-Chip Links

Abstract

A clock synchronizing circuit for repeaterless low swing interconnects is presented in this paper. The circuit uses a delay locked loop (DLL) to generate multiple phases of the clock, of which the one closest to the center of the eye is picked by a phase detector loop. The picked phase is then further fine tuned by an analog voltage controlled delay to position the sampling clock at the center of the eye. A clock domain transfer circuit then transfers the sampled data to the receiver clock domain with a maximum latency of three clock cycles. The proposed synchronizer has been designed and fabricated in 130 nm UMC MM CMOS technology. The circuit consumes 1.4 mW from a 1.2 V supply at a data rate of 1.3 Gbps. Further, the proposed synchronizer has been designed and simulated in TSMC 65 nm CMOS technology. Post layout simulations show that the synchronizer consumes 1.5 mW from a 1 V supply, at a data rate of 4 Gbps in this technology.