Intel Corporation

Frank Patrick O'Mahony

Bryan K Casper

Mozhgan Mansuri

James E Jaussi

Ajay Balankutty

Ganesh Balamurugan

Stephen R Mooney

Jihwan Kim

Mark A Anders

Krishnamurthy Soumyanath

Sami Hyvonen

Sandipan Kundu

Bong Chan Kim

Aaron K Martin

Matthew B Haycock

Joseph T Kennedy

Navneet Dour

Ayan Kar

Kalyan C Kolluru

Nicholas A Thomson

Roger K Cheng

Tzu-Chien Hsueh

Stephen Kim

Jad Rizk

Krishnamurthy Venkataramana

Alex Thomas

Kuan Zhou

Sridhar Tirumalai

Timothy Hollis

Quoc Nguyen

Adam Clay Faust

Yutao Liu

Kai Yu

Hari Venkatramani

Kemal Aygun

Rui Ma

Zuoguo Wu

Eyal Fayneh

Yu Amos Zhang

Sudip Shekhar

Md Mohiuddin Mazumder

Anupriya Sriramulu

Sivakumar Mudanai

Farag Fattouh

Haydar Kutuk

Wei-kai Shih

Gurmukh Singh

Richard Packard

Disclosed herein are integrated circuit (IC) structures including backside vias, as well as related methods and devices. In some embodiments, an IC structure may include: a device layer, wherein the device layer includes a plurality of active devices; a first metallization layer over the device layer, wherein the first metallization layer includes a first conductive pathway in conductive contact with at least one of the active devices in the device layer; a second metallization layer under the device layer, wherein the second metallization layer includes a second conductive pathway; and a conductive via in the device layer, wherein the conductive via is in conductive contact with at least one of the active devices in the device layer and also in conductive contact with the second conductive pathway.

Integrated circuit structures including backside vias

A clock buffer that uses low-to-medium quality factor (e.g., QF of 2 to 5) inductors in shunt-series and in series-shunt configuration in high-speed clock distribution stages. Shunt-series and series-shunt inductors extend amplifier bandwidth. Applying shunt-series and series-shunt inductors to high-speed clock distribution filters jitter, attenuates supply noise, and improves fanout. An asymmetric multiplexer with inductors in shunt or in shunt-series configurations. Another asymmetric multiplexer with capacitively coupled tri-stateable inverter-based buffer stages. These two multiplexer techniques along with the ability to 'hide' a load of a non-preferred path at a virtual ground node of the shunt inductor, the multiplexer improves the jitter and power consumption of the preferred path significantly. A de-multiplexer (DeMux) is also shown using inductors. A combination of a shunt-multiplexer and an inductor-based DeMux is also discussed.

Shunt-series and series-shunt inductively peaked clock buffer, and asymmetric multiplexer and de-multiplexer

A quadrature clock generator that takes advantage of the inherently low delay of a shunt-series inductively peaked clock buffer to generate quadrature clocks with the high jitter performance using just one additional stage in Q path compared to I path. The generator includes a delay cell that uses shunt-series peaking and uses a resistive DAC in series with the shunt inductor to provide a large delay range with good jitter characteristics. The resistive DAC can be placed near a real or a virtual ground to minimize capacitive loading on the signal path. This delay cell can provide greater than 2× delay tuning range and is suitable for clocks at high frequencies. This delay cell can also be used as a ring oscillator with large frequency tuning range. A low voltage differential signaling termination switch control that uses feed forward mechanism to control termination impedance of device in a receiver.

Wide-range inductor-based delay-cell and area efficient termination switch control

An apparatus enables a high-bandwidth 4-way data serializing (4:1 serializer) digital-to-analog converter. The apparatus uses active inductor-based bandwidth extension technique for two-stage driver enabling design of quarter-rate 4-way data serializing transmitter. The 4:1 serializer output bandwidth is extended by gate-resistor-peaked n-type transistor load working as an active inductor. A current steering switch with current source is used as the final driver. The 4:1 serializer includes a pulse width tuning technique with tunable ground voltage on the ground terminal of a pulse generator to tune an effective threshold voltage of the pulse generator. A Bessel-like LC filter is coupled to an output of the 4:1 serializer. The filter includes shunt peaking paths that provide zeros, which natively cancel large parasitic capacitance at a shunt peaking node. As such, active and passive devices including driver circuitry, ESD diodes, and any other sensing circuitry are flexibly added on any LC filter nodes.

Active inductor based high-bandwidth 2-state 4-way data serialization apparatus and method

An apparatus is provided, where the apparatus includes a plurality of components; a first circuitry to generate a clock signal, and to supply the clock signal to the plurality of components; a second circuitry to estimate, for each of two or more components of the plurality of components, a corresponding duty cycle of the clock signal received at the corresponding component, wherein two or more duty cycles corresponding to the two or more components are determined; a third circuitry to determine an average of the two or more duty cycles; and a fourth circuitry to correct a duty cycle of the clock signal generated by the first circuitry, based at least in part on the average.

Duty cycle correction system and low dropout (LDO) regulator based delay-locked loop (DLL)

Described is an apparatus which comprises: a power delivery distribution network (PDN) to provide a power supply to at least one circuit; and an on-die synchronous power supply noise injector to inject noise to the power supply on the PDN. Described is another apparatus which comprises: a PDN to provide power supply to various circuits; an on-die power supply noise (PSN) sampler to sample the power supply with an injected noise, wherein the PSN sampler to sample the power supply with at least two different clock signals; and a phase noise accumulator to randomize the periods of the at least two different clock signals.

Apparatus and method for measuring power supply noise

Described is an apparatus which comprises: an asynchronous clock generator to generate an asynchronous clock signal; a digital sampler for sampling a signal using the asynchronous clock signal; a duty cycle corrector (DCC) to receive a differential input clock and to generate a differential output clock, wherein the digital sampler to sample at least one of an output clock from the differential output clock; and a counter to count output of the digital sampler and to provide a control to the DCC to adjust duty cycle of the differential output clock.

Clock calibration using asynchronous digital sampling

Integrated circuit (IC) chip 'on-die' inductor structures (systems and methods for their manufacture) may improve signaling from a data signal circuit to a surface contact of the chip. Such inductor structures may include a first data signal inductor having (1) a second end electrically coupled to an electrostatic discharge (ESD) circuit and a capacitance value of that circuit, and (2) a first end electrically coupled to a the data signal surface contact and to a capacitance value at that contact; and a second data signal inductor having (1) a second end electrically coupled to the data signal circuit and a capacitance value of that circuit, (2) a first end electrically coupled to the second end of the first data signal inductor, and to the capacitance value of the ESD circuit. Inductor values of the first and second inductors may be selected to cancel out the capacitance values to improve signaling.

Rlink-on-die inductor structures to improve signaling

Macro-transistor structures are disclosed. In some cases, the macro-transistor structures have the same number of terminals and properties similar to long-channel transistors, but are suitable for analog circuits in deep-submicron technologies at deep-submicron process nodes. The macro-transistor structures can be implemented, for instance, with a plurality of transistors constructed and arranged in series, and with their gates tied together, generally referred to herein as a transistor stack. One or more of the serial transistors within the stack can be implemented with a plurality of parallel transistors and/or can have a threshold voltage that is different from the threshold voltages of other transistors in the stack. Alternatively, or in addition, one or more of the serial transistors within the macro-transistor can be statically or dynamically controlled to tune the performance characteristics of the macro-transistor. The macro-transistors can be used in numerous circuits, such as varactors, VCOs, PLLs, and tunable circuits.

Macro transistor devices

Macro-transistor structures are disclosed. In some cases, the macro-transistor structures have the same number of terminals and properties similar to long-channel transistors, but are suitable for analog circuits in deep-submicron technologies at deep-submicron process nodes. The macro-transistor structures can be implemented, for instance, with a plurality of transistors constructed and arranged in series, and with their gates tied together, generally referred to herein as a transistor stack. One or more of the serial transistors within the stack can be implemented with a plurality of parallel transistors and/or can have a threshold voltage that is different from the threshold voltages of other transistors in the stack. Alternatively, or in addition, one or more of the serial transistors within the macro-transistor can be statically or dynamically controlled to tune the performance characteristics of the macro-transistor. The macro-transistor can be used in numerous circuits, such as varactors, VCOs, PLLs, and tunable circuits.

Macro-transistor devices

An all-digital delay measurement circuit (DMC) constructed on an integrated circuit (IC) die characterizes clocking circuits such as full phase rotation interpolators, also constructed on the IC die. The on-die all-digital DMC produces a digital output value proportional to the relative delay between two clocks, normalized to the clock period of the two clocks.

On-die all-digital delay measurement circuit

For one disclosed embodiment, an integrated circuit may comprise an internal transmission line in one or more layers of the integrated circuit. The internal transmission line may be coupled to receive a signal from an external transmission line at a first end of the internal transmission line without use of termination circuitry. The internal transmission line may transmit the signal passively to a second end of the internal transmission line. The integrated circuit may also comprise first circuitry having an input coupled to the internal transmission line at a first location of the internal transmission line to receive the signal and second circuitry having an input coupled to the internal transmission line at a second location of the internal transmission line to receive the signal. The second location may be different from the first location. Other embodiments are also disclosed.

Integrated circuit passive signal distribution

Growing community of inventors

Portland, OR, United States of America

Frank Patrick O'Mahony