16,326 research outputs found
EffiTest: Efficient Delay Test and Statistical Prediction for Configuring Post-silicon Tunable Buffers
At nanometer manufacturing technology nodes, process variations significantly
affect circuit performance. To combat them, post- silicon clock tuning buffers
can be deployed to balance timing bud- gets of critical paths for each
individual chip after manufacturing. The challenge of this method is that path
delays should be mea- sured for each chip to configure the tuning buffers
properly. Current methods for this delay measurement rely on path-wise
frequency stepping. This strategy, however, requires too much time from ex-
pensive testers. In this paper, we propose an efficient delay test framework
(EffiTest) to solve the post-silicon testing problem by aligning path delays
using the already-existing tuning buffers in the circuit. In addition, we only
test representative paths and the delays of other paths are estimated by
statistical delay prediction. Exper- imental results demonstrate that the
proposed method can reduce the number of frequency stepping iterations by more
than 94% with only a slight yield loss.Comment: ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC), June 201
Effect of Jitter on the Settling Time of Mesochronous Clock Retiming Circuits
It is well known that timing jitter can degrade the bit error rate (BER) of
receivers that recover the clock from input data. However, timing jitter can
also result in an indefinite increase in the settling time of clock recovery
circuits, particularly in low swing mesochronous systems. Mesochronous clock
retiming circuits are required in repeaterless low swing on-chip interconnects.
We first discuss how timing jitter can result in a large increase in the
settling time of the clock recovery circuit. Next, the circuit is modelled as a
Markov chain with absorbing states. The mean time to absorption of the Markov
chain, which represents the mean settling time of the circuit, is determined.
The model is validated through behavioural simulations of the circuit, the
results of which match well with the model predictions. We consider circuits
with (i) data dependent jitter, (ii) random jitter, and (iii) combination of
both of them. We show that a mismatch between the strengths of up and down
corrections of the retiming can reduce the settling time. In particular, a 10%
mismatch can reduce the mean settling time by up to 40%. We leverage this fact
toward improving the settling time performance, and propose useful techniques
based on biased training sequences and mismatched charge pumps. We also present
a coarse+fine clock retiming circuit, which can operate in coarse first mode,
to reduce the settling time substantially. These fast settling retiming
circuits are verified with circuit simulations.Comment: 23 pages, 40 figure
Self-Reconfigurable Analog Arrays: Off-The Shelf Adaptive Electronics for Space Applications
Development of analog electronic solutions for space avionics is expensive and lengthy. Lack of flexible analog devices, counterparts to digital Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), prevents analog designers from benefits of rapid prototyping. This forces them to expensive and lengthy custom design, fabrication, and qualification of application specific integrated circuits (ASIC). The limitations come from two directions: commercial Field Programmable Analog Arrays (FPAA) have limited variability in the components offered on-chip; and they are only qualified for best case scenarios for military grade (-55C to +125C). In order to avoid huge overheads, there is a growing trend towards avoiding thermal and radiation protection by developing extreme environment electronics, which maintain correct operation while exposed to temperature extremes (-180degC to +125degC). This paper describes a recent FPAA design, the Self-Reconfigurable Analog Array (SRAA) developed at JPL. It overcomes both limitations, offering a variety of analog cells inside the array together with the possibility of self-correction at extreme temperatures
A 10Gb/s data-dependent jitter equalizer
An equalization circuit is presented that reduces data-dependent jitter by aligning data transition deviations. This paper presents an analytic solution to data-dependent jitter and demonstrates its impact on the phase noise of the recovered clock. A data-dependent jitter equalizer is presented that compensates for impairment of the channel and lowers the phase noise of the recovered clock. The circuit is implemented in a SiGe BiCMOS process and operates at 10 Gb/s. It suppresses phase noise resulting from data-dependent jitter by 10 dB
A programmable microsystem using system-on-chip for real-time biotelemetry
A telemetry microsystem, including multiple sensors, integrated instrumentation and a wireless interface has been implemented. We have employed a methodology akin to that for System-on-Chip microelectronics to design an integrated circuit instrument containing several "intellectual property" blocks that will enable convenient reuse of modules in future projects. The present system was optimized for low-power and included mixed-signal sensor circuits, a programmable digital system, a feedback clock control loop and RF circuits integrated on a 5 mm × 5 mm silicon chip using a 0.6 μm, 3.3 V CMOS process. Undesirable signal coupling between circuit components has been investigated and current injection into sensitive instrumentation nodes was minimized by careful floor-planning. The chip, the sensors, a magnetic induction-based transmitter and two silver oxide cells were packaged into a 36 mm × 12 mm capsule format. A base station was built in order to retrieve the data from the microsystem in real-time. The base station was designed to be adaptive and timing tolerant since the microsystem design was simplified to reduce power consumption and size. The telemetry system was found to have a packet error rate of 10<sup>-</sup><sup>3</sup> using an asynchronous simplex link. Trials in animal carcasses were carried out to show that the transmitter was as effective as a conventional RF device whilst consuming less power
Low-Jitter Clock Multiplication: a Comparioson between PLLs and DLLs
This paper shows that, for a given power budget, a practical phase-locked loop (PLL)-based clock multiplier generates less jitter than a delay-locked loop (DLL) equivalent. This is due to the fact that the delay cells in a PLL ring-oscillator can consume more power per cell than their counterparts in the DLL. We can show that this effect is stronger than the notorious jitter accumulation effect that occurs in the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) of a PLL. First, an analysis of the stochastic-output jitter of the architectures, due to the most important noise sources, is presented. Then, another important source of jitter in a DLL-based clock multiplier is treated, namely the stochastic mismatch in the delay cells which compose the DLL voltage-controlled delay line (VCDL). An analysis is presented that relates the stochastic spread of the delay of the cells to the output jitter of the clock multiplier. A circuit design technique, called impedance level scaling, is then presented which allows the designer to optimize the noise and mismatch behavior of a circuit, independently from other specifications such as speed and linearity. Applying this technique on a delay cell design yields a direct tradeoff between noise induced jitter and power usage, and between stochastic mismatch induced jitter and power usage
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