A tri-modal 20Gbps/link differential/DDR3/GDDR5 memory interface

Author

Kaviani, K. ; Wu, T. ; Amirkhany, A. ; Wei, J. ; Shen, J. ; Chen, C. ; Chin, T. ; Beyene, W. ; Dressler, D. ; Gadde, V. ; Huang, C. ; Le, P. ; M, M. ; Madden, C. ; Mishra, N. ; Raghavan, L. ; Saito, K. ; Secker, D. ; Shi, X. ; Shuaeb, F. ; Srinivas, S. ;

Author_Institution

Rambus Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

15-17 June 2011

Firstpage

234

Lastpage

235

Abstract

An improved asymmetric bidirectional memory interface implemented in 40-nm CMOS process achieves 20 Gbps per data link, and can also communicate with DDR3 and GDDR5 DRAM at 1.6 Gbps and 6.4 Gbps, respectively. The low-power tri-modal high-speed interface is enabled by a continuous 1.6 GHz to 10 GHz clock generation mechanism, and substantial reuse of the circuit elements between the signaling modes, particularly at the driver output stage. In the high speed differential mode, the system utilizes a 1-tap transmit equalizer during a WRITE to the memory, while in memory READ it uses a linear equalizer (LEQ) with 3dB of peaking as well as a calibrated 1-tap predictive decision feedback equalizer (prDFE). The interface consisting of 16 data links achieves efficiency of better than 5.3 mW/Gbps.

Keywords

CMOS memory circuits; DRAM chips; computer interfaces; equalisers; low-power electronics; CMOS process; DDR3 DRAM; GDDR5 DRAM; asymmetric bidirectional memory interface; bit rate 1.6 Gbit/s; bit rate 20 Gbit/s; bit rate 6.4 Gbit/s; circuit element reuse; data link; driver output stage; high speed differential mode; linear equalizer; low-power trimodal high-speed interface; memory READ; memory WRITE; predictive decision feedback equalizer; signaling mode; size 40 nm; transmit equalizer; trimodal differential-DDR3-GDDR5 memory interface; Clocks; Delay; Multiplexing; Phase locked loops; Random access memory; Voltage-controlled oscillators;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

VLSI Circuits (VLSIC), 2011 Symposium on

Conference_Location

Honolulu, HI

ISSN

2158-5601

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-175-5

Type

conf

Filename

5986052