United Technologies Corporation

Nvidia Corporation

Quality Semiconductor Inc.

Curtis J Dicke

Jack Wolosewicz

An off-chip driver circuit having a set of input terminals and an output terminal, a pull-up transistor having a controllable path connected between a first power supply and the output terminal of the off-chip driver circuit, a pull-down transistor having a controllable path connected between a second power supply and the output terminal of the off-chip driver circuit, a first controllable path for applying a first voltage at one of the input terminals to a control terminal of the pull-up transistor, the first controllable path functioning in response to voltages at the output terminal below a first value, a second controllable path for applying a second voltage greater than the first voltage to the control terminal of the pull-up transistor, the second controllable path functioning in response to voltages at the output terminal above the first value.

Five volt tolerant output driver

A mixed signal phase locked loop is optimized for fast settling and low noise sensitivity. To this end, this device has a digital wide range delay line and a low gain per stage adjust. When first activated, the loop calibrates the digital delay line to its nominal delay characteristic. This delay line, together with the linear low gain per stage adjust, constitutes the internal oscillator of the phase locked loop. After achieving nominal delay, the oscillator uses the low gain per stage adjust to lock to a desired reference or a submultiple thereof. According to the preferred embodiment, the loop locks its internal 125 MHz oscillator to a 25 MHz reference. After achieving lock, the loop performs synchronous data recovery by locking to an incoming data stream, instead of the internal reference, and performing bit framing. In case of losing lock, the phase locked loop of the present invention is capable of recalibrating itself and regaining lock in under 3 microseconds.

Mixed signal phase locked loop with process and temperature calibration

An output driver for an integrated circuit reduces noise generation within the circuit by maintaining di/dt at a low value.

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Colorado Springs, CO, United States of America

Curtis J Dicke