Physical layer for peripheral interconnect with reduced power and area

Abstract

An integrated circuit (IC) implements an industry standard-defined peripheral interconnect to connect to another integrated circuit or component in a system. The industry standard specification includes a software interface that is well-defined and implemented by various software in the system, and thus is desirable to retain. However, the physical interconnect in the systems employing the integrated circuit may be short, and thus the elaborate physical layer definition may consume more integrated circuit area and power than is otherwise desirable in the IC. The IC may implement a simpler and more power-efficient physical layer, reducing both power consumption and semiconductor substrate area consumption, in some embodiments.