A new low-power, area efficiency all-digital delay-locked loop (ADDLL) circuit is proposed for DDR3 application. The ADDLL can process the input clock frequency ranging from 333 MHz to 800 MHz (DDR3-667/800/1066/1600) by using Phase Detector (PD), Delay Control Delay Line (DCDL), Digital Loop Filter Controller (DLFC) and Delay Generator (DG). To achieve 1.6 Gb/s/pin operation, a novel DCDL scheme is employed. The DCDL has a small delay with a shunt capacitor based digitally controlled delay element. A splitcontrol thermometer-code generator generates the control voltages used to set a current in the current-starved inverters. The testchip fabricated with a 40-nm CMOS process gives the ADDLL data rate of 667 Mbps-1.6 Gbps. Experimental results that show the power consumption is 1.87 mW at 1.1 V with active area is 0.0137 mm 2 . Keywords all-digital delay-locked loop, double-data-rate, digitally controlled delay line, shunt capacitor, thermometer code
CitationChen H M, Ma S, Wang L, et al. A low-power, area-efficient all-digital delay-locked loop for DDR3 SDRAM controller.