On overcoming the limitations of single-ended signaling for graphics memory interfaces

Author

Amirkhany, Amir ; Beyene, Wendem ; Madden, Chris ; Abbasfar, Aliazam ; Secker, Dave ; Oh, Dan ; Hekmat, Mohammad ; Schmitt, Ralf ; Yuan, Chuck

Author_Institution

Rambus Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

14-16 Nov. 2011

Firstpage

25

Lastpage

28

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of various solutions that can be applied to improve the performance of SE signaling at small incremental cost to the system. Specifically, we examine solutions for mitigating the impact of crosstalk, supply noise, and inter-symbol interference (ISI) to enable reliable communication over a graphics memory channel at 12.8-Gbps. We further compare measured silicon data from a 12.8-Gbps SE interface to a 20Gbps differential (DIFF) interface, implemented in the same silicon technology and sharing many of the critical circuits.

Keywords

DRAM chips; crosstalk; elemental semiconductors; graphics processing units; interference suppression; intersymbol interference; silicon; DIFF interface; DRAM chips; ISI mitigation; SE interface; SE signaling; bit rate 12.8 Gbit/s; bit rate 20 Gbit/s; communication reliability; crosstalk mitigation; differential interface; graphics memory channel; graphics memory interfaces; incremental cost; intersymbol interference; silicon technology; single-ended signaling; supply noise mitigation; Crosstalk; Encoding; Impedance; Noise; Pins; Receivers; System-on-a-chip;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC), 2011 IEEE Asian

Conference_Location

Jeju

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1784-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ASSCC.2011.6123655

Filename

6123655