Abstract-A testchip of 8Gb/s forwarded clock serial link receivers is presented. The receiver exploits a novel low-power super-harmonic injection-locked ring oscillator for symmetric multi-phase local clock generation and dekewing. Further power reduction is achieved by designing most the receiver circuits in the near-threshold region of 0.6V supply, with the exception of only the global clock buffer, test buffers and synthesized digital circuits at nominal 1V supply. At architectural level, 1:10 direct demultiplexing rate is chosen as a demonstration of achieving low supply operation by high-parallelism design. Fabricated in 65nm CMOS technology, two receiver prototypes are integrated in this testchip, one without and the other with front S/Hs. Including the amortized power of global clock distribution, they consume 1.3mW and 2mW respectively at 8Gb/s input data rate, which achieve the power efficiency of 0.163mW/Gb/s and 0.25mW/Gb/s. Measurement results show both receivers get BER < 10 -12 across a 20-cm FR4 PCB channel.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.