Seoul National University

Skhynix Inc.

Yunhee Lee

Deog-Kyoon Jeong

Woonghee Lee

Byungjun Kang

Daehyun Koh

Minkyo Shim

A semiconductor device includes a first switch coupling a first switch coupling a first power source and a first node according to a first control signal; a sense amplifier coupled between the first node and a second node and performing a sensing operation; a second switch coupling a second power source and the second node according to a second control signal; and a sense amplifier control circuit providing the first control signal and the second control signal. The sense amplifier control circuit controls the second control signal so that a voltage of the second node reaches a shift voltage higher than a voltage of the second power source during a first sensing period of the sensing operation and a bias current flows through the second node during a second sensing period of the sensing operation. The sensing period is subsequent to the first sensing period.

Semiconductor device including sense amplifier having enhanced sensing margin and method of controlling the same

The present disclosure relates to an adaptation method for data level (dLev) or data swing detection in a high-speed link system for multi-level (e.g. PAM-4) signaling. Provided are a receiver and a receiving method in which when a swing range of data received as an input is changed according to a channel condition, reference levels of data/swing detection samplers are not adaptively controlled, but the reference levels are fixed and a variable gain amplifier (VGA) is adaptively controlled for response to the change. Through the present disclosure, offset calibration of the data/swing detection samplers is more accurately performed and lower bit error rate (BER) is thus achieved.

Method and apparatus for multi-level signaling adaptation with fixed reference levels

Growing community of inventors

Seoul, South Korea

Yunhee Lee