The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 24, 2003
Filed:
Feb. 08, 2002
David Kwong, Fremont, CA (US);
Kwong Shing Lin, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Pericom Semiconductor Corp., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A clock driver chip has several banks of clock outputs driven by a single clock reference. Each clock output is driven by large pull-up and pull-down transistors, which have gates driven by pre-driver lines generated by a pre-driver circuit. Individual clock outputs, or a bank of outputs, are enabled by enable signals. A shorting switch is activated when enables for a pair of clock outputs are in a same state. The shorting switch has two transmission gates. One transmission gate shorts the pre-driver lines to the large p-channel transistors of the pair of outputs, while the other transmission gate shorts the pre-driver lines to the large n-channel transistors of the pair of outputs. Pre-driver lines to the pull-up transistors within a bank driven by the same enable can be hardwired together, as can the pre-driver lines to the pull-down transistors. Shorting switches can short banks together to reduce output skew.