High performance CMOS symmetric low swing to high swing converter for on-chip interconnects

Abstract

This paper reports a symmetric high performance, low to full swing level converter (sib-driver) for recovering signal levels at the receiver end of the global interconnects with large capacitive loads. The proposed sib-driver provides a matching receiver for the Up-Down Low swing voltage Driver (UDLD) signaling style for driving the global interconnect lines. When implemented on 0.13μm CMOS 1.2V technology, the sib-driver performs 23% faster, and reduces the power delay product and energy delay product by 25.5%, (having similar active area, of 19.6μm2), when compared with a counterpart Up Low swing voltage Driver (ULD) level converter (lc-driver). This paper also proposes several other level converter receivers, each with different performance energy saving trade off. The paper also provides comparative performance evaluation of the various proposed level converters and lc-driver.