Intel Corporation

Matthew R Peters

Jayen J Desai

Erin D Francom

Nicholas J Denler

Described is an apparatus comprising: a delay line including at least four delay stages coupled together in a series; a first multiplexer having a first input coupled to an output of a first delay stage of the at least four delay stages, and a second input coupled to an output of a third delay stage of the at least four delay stages; a second multiplexer having a first input coupled to an output of a second delay stage of the at least four delay stages, and a second input coupled to an output of a fourth delay stage of the at least four delay stages; and a phase interpolator coupled to outputs of the first and second multiplexers, the phase interpolator having an output.

Apparatus for a monotonic delay line, method for fast locking of a digital DLL with clock stop/start tolerance, apparatus and method for robust clock edge placement, and apparatus and method for clock offset tuning

A delay line has at least four delay stages coupled together in a series, two multiplexers, and a phase interpolator. The first multiplexer has a first input coupled to an output of the first delay stage, and a second input coupled to an output of the third delay stage. Similarly, the second multiplexer has a first input coupled to an output of the second delay stage, and a second input coupled to an output of the fourth delay stage. The phase interpolator is coupled to outputs of the first and second multiplexers, and has an output.

A digital clock placement engine has circuitry that adjusts a duty cycle of a clock signal and adjusts the locations of the rising/falling edges of the clock signal for purposes of data sampling or other operations. In a forwarded-clock interface implementation, a clock signal is received along with a data signal, and the received clock signal may be distorted to due various factors. To enable the received data signal to be sampled correctly, the clock placement engine generates a recovered clock signal having rising and falling edges that are placed/timed between the rising and falling edges of the received clock signal.

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Fort Collins, CO, United States of America

Matthew R Peters