A Feed-Forward Equalizer for Capacitively Coupled On-Chip Interconnect

Repeaterless low swing interconnects are potential candidates for high speed low power signaling over on-chip global wires. Capacitive pre-emphasis at the transmitter has been shown to improve the achievable data rate by increasing the relative power at high frequencies. This paper shows an improved transmitter with a 1-tap feed-forward equalizer in addition to capacitive pre-emphasis. A design method for finding the transmitter design parameters using scrupulously chosen bit vectors is also presented. Post layout simulations show that the proposed link achieves a data rate of 4 Gbps over a 10 mm long M8 line with energy consumption of 313 fJ/bit in 90 nm CMOS technology.