Design of a Quaternary Single-Ended Current-Mode Circuit for an Energy-Efficient Inter-chip Asynchronous Communication Link

A single-ended-style current-mode circuit with quaternary current signaling is proposed for an energy-efficient asynchronous communication link. The use of quaternary-encoded current signaling and dynamic current-feedback mechanism makes information density twice per wire because of small signal-voltage swing with maintaining high-speed switching capability, which resulting in energy-efficient asynchronous data transmission. It is demonstrated that the proposed link with a 10mm inter-chip transmission line achieves the throughput of 1.1Gbps per wire at the power supply of 1.2V under a 130nm CMOS technology.