CCS: A low-power capacitively charge-sharing transmitter for NoC links

Abstract

In this letter, a capacitively charge-sharing transmitter (CCS) is proposed as a novel design to replace the traditional differential capacitive pre-emphasis transmitter (CPE), for the purpose of reducing the dynamic power consumption by half. The CCS functions as a transmitter for mesh NoC links to achieve highspeed and low-power transmission. CCS generates a pair of differential low-swing signals at a time through charge-sharing. Its capacitively driven mode enables high-speed transmission and provides pre-emphasis to extend the bandwidth. Simulation shows that CCS can achieve 9 Gb/s data rate over 2 mm twisted differential interconnects with only 56.4 fJ/b power consumption. With a clockless hysteresis receiver, the transceiver for NoC links enables a data rate of 7 Gb/s with at least 70% eye-opening while consumes only 90.8 fJ/b.

Green phase difference coding with low switching activity for Network-on-Chip

“…And the transition reduction of the GPD coding is up to 21.16% compared with that of the SGC coding for random data source. Table III shows the Energy saving of interconnects by applying different coding for the 130 nm CMOS technology at 1.2 V. In the simulation, the frequency of the system clock is set as 1 GHz [8] and the length of interconnects is set as 2 mm of metal-4 with the width of 0.4 um and the spacing of 0.6 um [12]. We have taken many types of the data source into considerations, including the random data source …”