Current-Mode Transceiver for Silicon Interposer Channel

An energy-efficient 3 Gb/s current-mode interface scheme is proposed for on-chip global interconnects and silicon interposer channels. The transceiver core consists of an open-drain transmitter with one-tap pre-emphasis and a current sense amplifier load as the receiver. The current sense amplifier load is formed by stacking a PMOS diode stage and a cross-coupled NMOS stage, providing an optimum current-mode receiver without any bias current. The proposed scheme is verified with two cases of transceivers implemented in 65 nm CMOS. A 10 mm point-to-point data-only channel shows an energy efficiency of 9.5 fJ/b/mm, and a 20 mm four-drop source-synchronous link achieves 29.4 fJ/b/mm including clock and data channels.