Intel Corporation

Sanjay Joshi

Harry Muljono

Balkaran Gill

Charlie Changhong Lin

Raj Singh Dua

Analog Front End (AFE) driver or transmitter is used for ESD protection of an input-output (IO) pin, thus reducing ESD diode count and subsequently lowering the pad capacitance to achieve high performance in IO circuits like double data rate (DDR) IO, PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), etc. The channel of active devices that constitute AFE driver are used to connect an IO pad to discharge the ESD current to ground, thus providing an alternative path to ESD current and subsequently reducing the ESD diode count. An additional p-type device (Driver Path Enabler (DPE)) is coupled between the IO pad and a gate terminal of the AFE driver. This additional p-type device triggers the channel of the AFE driver. This p-type device is controlled by an RC based structure which cuts the p-type device off during regular operations when power is ramped-up.

Driver assisted ESD protection apparatus and method

Some embodiments include an apparatus including a first node to receive an input data signal including a first edge, and a second edge occurring after the first edge; a second node to receive a strobe signal including an edge; a first circuit to generate a modified strobe signal based on the strobe signal, the modified strobe signal including an edge occurring after the edge of the strobe signal; a second circuit to generate a modified data signal based on the input data signal, the modified data signal including an edge occurring after the second edge of the input data signal; and a third circuit to respond to the modified strobe signal and generate an output data signal based on the modified data signal.

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Bengaluru, India

Sanjay Joshi