Analyses of signaling techniques for self-timed systems

Abstract

This work presents signaling techniques for global and local on-chip interconnects, namely voltage-mode and current-mode differential signaling and simultaneous bidirectional signaling. In the proposed approach, these techniques were applied along with the self-timed design methodology to the interconnects of the path metric unit of the Viterbi decoder, and to the global on-chip bus segment. The simulations are performed using 0.18 /spl mu/m technology. These interconnects are compared in terms of power consumption, noise, and speed. The study considered in this paper revealed the possibilities of current-mode signaling in global on-chip interconnects, while for local interconnects, the optimal result is achieved by applying voltage-mode signaling.