A 14Gb/s high-swing thin-oxide device SST TX in 45nm CMOS SOI

The limited supply voltage of today's state-of-the-art CMOS technologies makes the design of high-speed transmitters at signaling swings above the typical 1V supply a challenging task. Higher-voltage TX amplitude is not only required in older I/O standards and legacy applications, but also in emerging electro-optical extensions where high voltage swing combined with high-speed operation is desired. Higher swing also helps meet certain I/O standards in applications where losses introduced by high-density package constraints can be compensated to some extent. The source-series terminated (SST) driver is a versatile building block in a multistandard I/O TX thanks to its potential for low-power operation, its low area consumption, high CMOS-style circuit content, and flexible termination capability [1]. Also, the SST driver supports single-ended output and differential operation.

[1]  Thomas Toifl,et al.  A T-Coil-Enhanced 8.5 Gb/s High-Swing SST Transmitter in 65 nm Bulk CMOS With $≪ -$16 dB Return Loss Over 10 GHz Bandwidth , 2008, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[2]  C. Menolfi,et al.  A 16Gb/s Source-Series Terminated Transmitter in 65nm CMOS SOI , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers.

[3]  H. Sanchez,et al.  A versatile 3.3 V/2.5 V/1.8 V CMOS I/O driver built in a 0.2 /spl mu/m 3.5 nm Tox 1.8 V CMOS technology , 1999, 1999 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers. ISSCC. First Edition (Cat. No.99CH36278).