A Jitter Attenuating Timing Chain

Abstract

A long chain of inverters and wire segments will amplify clock jitter and drop timing pulses due to intersymbol interference. We present a jitter attenuating buffer based on surfing techniques. Our buffer circuit consists of a few inverters with variable output strength that implement a simple, low-gain DLL. Chains of these surfing buffers attenuate jitter making them well suited for source-synchronous interfaces. Furthermore, our chains can be used to reliably transmit handshaking signals and support sliding-window protocols to improve the throughput of asynchronous communication.