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John Teifel and Rajit Manohar
We present a high-speed, clockless, serial link transceiver for
inter-chip communication in asynchronous VLSI systems. Serial link
transceivers achieve high off-chip data rates by using multiplexing
transmitters and demultiplexing receivers that interface parallel
on-chip data paths with high-speed, serial off-chip buses. While
synchronous transceivers commonly use multi-phase clocks to control
the data multiplexing and demultiplexing, our clockless transceiver
uses a token-ring architecture that eliminates complex clock
generation and synchronization circuitry. Furthermore, our clockless
receiver dynamically self-adjusts its sampling rate to match the bit
rate of the transmitter. Our HSPICE simulations report that in a
0.18um CMOS technology this transceiver design operates at up to
3-Gb/s and dissipates 77 mW of power with a 1.8-V supply voltage.
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