Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to equalization techniques for high-speed data and more specifically to implementations of decision feedback equalizer circuits and methods for high-speed data communications with improved power efficiency.
Description of the Related Art
As the processing power of digital computing engines grows with improvements in technology, and increasingly interconnected networks are developed to harness this power, higher bandwidth data transmission is needed in systems such as servers and data communication routers. Increasing serial link data rates above a few gigabits per second becomes challenging, due to limited channel bandwidth. The bandwidth of an electrical channel (e.g., transmission line) may be reduced by several physical effects, including skin effect, dielectric loss, and reflections due to impedance discontinuities. In the time domain, limited channel bandwidth leads to broadening of the transmitted pulses over more than one unit interval (UI), and the received signal suffers from intersymbol interference (ISI).
An effective method of compensating for the signal distortions due to limited channel bandwidth is to add equalization functions to the input/output (I/O) circuitry. The use of a nonlinear equalizer known as a decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) in the receiver is particularly well-suited to equalizing a high-loss channel. Unlike linear equalizers, the DFE is able to flatten the channel response (and reduce signal distortion) without amplifying noise or crosstalk, which is a critical advantage when channel losses exceed 20-30 dB.
Referring to
In general, the larger the number of taps that can be applied toward canceling ISI, the more effective the equalization becomes. Practical DFE implementations often employ as many as 10 feedback taps in order to accomplish equalization of difficult electrical channels at multi-gigabit-per-second data rates. Unfortunately, the large number of latches and feedback circuits used in a multi-tap DFE consumes significant power and chip area. In some applications, such as a high-end processor chip having thousands of I/Os, the power and area costs of a conventional multi-tap DFE are prohibitive, as the I/O circuitry would consume most of the system power and area budgets.
The area and power requirements of I/O circuitry will become even more stringent with the introduction of dense, fine-pitch silicon packaging technologies, which are expected to be capable of supporting tens of thousands of high data rate I/Os for local chip-to-chip interconnect. One example of such a dense packaging technology is a silicon carrier, the basic concept of which is sketched in
Referring to
A 1/n-rate decision feedback equalizer (DFE) includes a plurality of branches. Each branch includes a summer circuit configured to add a feedback signal to a received input, and a latch configured to receive an output of the summer circuit in accordance with a clock signal. A feedback circuit includes a multiplexer configured to receive as input, an output of each branch, the multiplexer having a clocked select input and configured to multiplex the output of each branch to assemble a full rate bit sequence, and a filter configured to provide cancellation of intersymbol interference (ISI) from the received input to be provided to the summer circuit of each branch.
A method for decision feedback equalization includes providing a 1/n rate decision feedback equalization circuit having a plurality of branches; summing a feedback signal from one or more branches with a received input using a summer circuit; receiving an output of the summer circuit with a latch in accordance with a clock signal; feeding back an output of the latch to a multiplexer which receives as input the outputs of each branch, the multiplexer being configured to multiplex the output of each branch to assemble a full rate bit sequence; and canceling intersymbol interference (ISI) from the received input using a continuous-time infinite impulse response (IIR) filter with a frequency-domain transfer function.
A combined slicer and summer circuit includes differential output lines connected to a plurality of differential currents to be summed. A resettable current-comparator load is directly coupled to the differential output lines, the current-comparator load configured to directly receive summed differential currents from the differential output lines such that depending on a sign of the summed differential currents, either a positive or negative differential voltage develops between the differential output lines to latch a binary zero or one.
A double regenerating latch includes two cascaded differential regenerating latch stages to achieve improved speed and sensitivity. The stages include a first stage having first input transistors of a first type, cross-coupled load transistors and reset transistors of a second type, and a second stage having second input transistors of the second type and cross-coupled load transistors of the first type, such that when the first stage is in an opaque state the reset transistors precharge outputs of the first stage to a power supply voltage, the second input transistors of the second stage are shut off to retain outputs at levels indicative of a previous stored bit. When the first stage is activated, the cross-coupled load transistors of the first stage and of the second type begin to regenerate an input signal and at a same time, an output common-mode of the first stage falls to turn on the second input transistors of the second stage. The second stage includes the cross-coupled load transistors of the first type and is switched after the output of the first stage achieves a threshold signal level to provide additional regenerative gain.
These and other features and advantages will become apparent from the following detailed description of illustrative embodiments thereof, which is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings.
The disclosure will provide details in the following description of preferred embodiments with reference to the following figures wherein:
The present principles provide decision feedback equalizer (DFE) circuits and methods which employ a filter to replace one or more feedback loops that are employed in removing ISI from channels. In one embodiment, a 1/n-rate DFE (e.g., a half rate, quarter rate, etc.) includes an infinite impulse response (IIR) filter that filters the feedback signal to a summing amplifier. In addition, a combined summer/slicer circuit is provided, which further assists in reducing area and energy consumption. A double regenerating latch is also provided.
Embodiments of the present invention can take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment or an embodiment including both hardware and software elements. In a preferred embodiment, the present invention is implemented in software, which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software, microcode, etc.
Furthermore, the invention can take the form of a computer program product accessible from a computer-usable or computer-readable medium providing program code for use by or in connection with a computer or any instruction execution system. For the purposes of this description, a computer-usable or computer readable medium can be any apparatus that may include, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. The medium can be an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system (or apparatus or device). Examples of a computer-readable medium include a semiconductor or solid state memory, magnetic tape, a removable computer diskette, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), a rigid magnetic disk and an optical disk. Current examples of optical disks include compact disk-read only memory (CD-ROM), compact disk-read/write (CD-R/W) and DVD.
A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing program code may include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectly to memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can include local memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cache memories which provide temporary storage of at least some program code to reduce the number of times code is retrieved from bulk storage during execution. Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards, displays, pointing devices, etc.) may be coupled to the system either directly or through intervening I/O controllers.
Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system to become coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers or storage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems, cable modem and Ethernet cards are just a few of the currently available types of network adapters.
Circuits as described herein may be part of the design for an integrated circuit chip. The chip design may be created in a graphical computer programming language, and stored in a computer storage medium (such as a disk, tape, physical hard drive, or virtual hard drive such as in a storage access network). If the designer does not fabricate chips or the photolithographic masks used to fabricate chips, the designer transmits the resulting design by physical means (e.g., by providing a copy of the storage medium storing the design) or electronically (e.g., through the Internet) to such entities, directly or indirectly. The stored design is then converted into the appropriate format (e.g., Graphic Data System II (GDSII)) for the fabrication of photolithographic masks, which typically include multiple copies of the chip design in question that are to be formed on a wafer. The photolithographic masks are utilized to define areas of the wafer (and/or the layers thereon) to be etched or otherwise processed.
The resulting integrated circuit chips can be distributed by the fabricator in raw wafer form (that is, as a single wafer that has multiple unpackaged chips), as a bare die, or in a packaged form. In the latter case the chip is mounted in a single chip package (such as a plastic carrier, with leads that are affixed to a motherboard or other higher level carrier) or in a multichip package (such as a ceramic carrier that has either or both surface interconnections or buried interconnections). In any case the chip is then integrated with other chips, discrete circuit elements, and/or other signal processing devices as part of either (a) an intermediate product, such as a motherboard, or (b) an end product. The end product can be any product that includes integrated circuit chips, ranging from toys and other low-end applications to advanced computer products having a display, a keyboard or other input device, and a central processor.
Referring now to the drawings in which like numerals represent the same or similar elements and initially to
Careful study of the time domain channel response suggests a novel solution to equalizing such a high-resistance channel. The impulse response of the channel is well modeled by a decaying exponential at all times more than 2 unit intervals (UI) after a main cursor. Since the impulse response of a first-order RC low-pass filter has the shape of a decaying exponential, a filter may be employed in a DFE feedback path to generate the signal needed to cancel the post-cursor ISI in the received data input. For example, a DFE with a first-order RC low-pass feedback filter extends the data rate of 10 mm on-chip interconnects up to 2 gigabits per second. Since the large multiple of taps needed in a conventional DFE implementation is replaced by a simple RC filter, large power and area savings are attained.
Referring to
Referring to
While DFE 200 with IIR filter 204 is an area- and power-efficient structure for equalizing many channels, including the example silicon carrier link of
Referring to
A pair of decision-making slicers (or latches) 306 driven by a half-rate clock CLK are used to sample the data input. The slicers 306 are driven on opposite phases of CLK (e.g., CLK and
Correct cancellation of the ISI needs that the impulse response of the IIR filter 304 be convolved with the complete bit sequence of the data input. To accomplish this, a 2:1 multiplexer (MUX) 310 with a selector driven by CLK is employed to interleave the even and odd data bits (DE and DO) to form full-rate data (DFR) suitable for driving the input of the IIR filter 304.
In a timing diagram of
The embodiment of
Referring to
The summing amplifiers 312 and decision-making slicers 306 in the architecture of
Cascading the DFE summing amplifier 456 and decision-making slicer 458 as indicated in
Referring to
Some of the schematic details shown in
Referring to
It should be understood that aspects of the embodiment illustrated in
Many standard latch designs can be used to implement the slave latches 602 shown in
Referring to
In one embodiment, the latch 700 is particularly useful when receiving a weakly regenerating signal from a component such as a summer/slicer (500,
In the simulation, the input signal to the summer/slicer 500 is very small so that its output is only weakly regenerating. The weakly regenerating input signal to latch 700 is amplified by the regeneration of the first stage 702, but not fully regenerated to rail-to-rail signal levels by the time CLK goes high (and its complement goes low). Due to extra regeneration, the output of the second stage 704 is amplified further and does approach rail-to-rail signal levels. These rail to rail output signals of the second stage cross each other at a common-mode above half the supply voltage, which makes them suitable for directly driving an NMOS differential current switch (such as the one which realizes the H1 tap in
It should be understood that the double regenerating latch illustrated in
To demonstrate the functionality of the half-rate DFE with IIR filter and evaluate its performance, a test chip was designed and fabricated in 65 nm bulk CMOS technology. Since the combined summer/slicer 500 of
Other straightforward modifications and variations of the disclosed embodiments, such as the use of quarter-rate instead of half-rate architecture, will be understood to those skilled in the art. Such modifications and variations do not depart from the spirit and scope of the present principles.
Having described preferred embodiments of circuits and methods for DFE with reduced area and power consumption (which are intended to be illustrative and not limiting), it is noted that modifications and variations can be made by persons skilled in the art in light of the above teachings. It is therefore to be understood that changes may be made in the particular embodiments disclosed which are within the scope and spirit of the invention as outlined by the appended claims. Having thus described aspects of the invention, with the details and particularity required by the patent laws, what is claimed and desired protected by Letters Patent is set forth in the appended claims.
This application is a Divisional application of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/366,843 filed on Feb. 6, 2009, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20120314757 A1 | Dec 2012 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 12366843 | Feb 2009 | US |
Child | 13590913 | US |