Crosstalk immune interconnect driver design

Abstract

The effect of crosstalk noise becomes increasingly significant as geometries continue to shrink into the deep sub-micrometer regime and clock-frequency increases into the multi GHz domain. Dynamic delay caused by coupling capacitance between adjacent interconnections is a critical problem, as it cannot accurately be estimated in static timing analysis. This work presents a new driver circuit scheme called the crosstalk immune interconnect driver (XTIID), for capacitively coupled interconnects, which eliminates pattern-dependent coupling noise. Also, such an interconnect drive technology has the potential to facilitate the dynamic timing problem in deep submicrometer VLSI design.