ESD-resilient active biasing scheme for high-speed SSTL I/Os

A bidirectional SSTL I/O which utilizes an active-biasing technique to achieve enhanced ESD resilience is presented. During an ESD event, each vulnerable transistor has an appropriate bias applied to minimize the peak voltage across gate oxide and drain-source regions. Active-bias control circuits can be substituted for secondary protection to improve circuit performance and ESD reliability.