Wave-pipelined on-chip global interconnect

A novel wave-pipelined global interconnect system is developed for reliable, high throughput, on-chip data communication. We argue that because there is only a single signal propagation path and a single type of 1-input gate (inverter), a wave-pipelined interconnect will have less stringent timing constraints than a wave-pipelined combinational logic block. A phase-lock loop based clock and data recovery unit architecture, adopted from off-chip high speed digital serial link, is designed for on-chip application so as to minimize power and area cost. Preliminary Monte Carlo simulation indicated that the wave-pipelined global interconnect architecture potentially can offer 18% higher throughput than a flip-flop pipelined global interconnect architecture at about the same level of reliability. While delivering data through long interconnect at the same bit rate, the wave-pipelined architecture consumes less power and requires less chip real estate.