Method and apparatus for fully-differential half-circulator for bi-directional small-signal signaling
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorLuiz M. Franca-Neto
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and apparatus for a half-circulator is described. In one embodiment, the half-circulator may be used in a bus between processing units or other logical blocks using small-signaling with current-mode logic. For this reason, the half-circulator implements addition and subtraction of small-signal currents. Using small-signal signaling, the half-circulator (and the bus containing half-circulators by extension) improves robustness against noise from the power supply lines, and minimizes the added jitter suffered by other schemes when implemented on a bus with several tapping nodes.
Claims23
An apparatus, comprising:
- a first current adder, coupled to a voltage-mode input port, and a voltage-mode output port;
- and
- a second current adder, coupled to said voltage-mode input port, said voltage-mode output port, and a current-mode port.
A method, comprising:
- coupling a first current adder to a voltage-mode input port, and to a voltage-mode output port;
- and
- coupling a second current adder to said voltage-mode input port, to said voltage-mode output port, and to a current-mode port.
An apparatus, comprising:
- means for coupling a first current adder to a voltage-mode input port, and to a voltage-mode output port;
- and
- means for coupling a second current adder to said voltage-mode input port, to said voltage-mode output port, and to a current-mode port.
A system, comprising:
- a first half-circulator including a first voltage-mode input port, a first voltage-mode output port, and a first small-signal current-mode port;
- and
- a second half-circulator including a second voltage-mode input port, a second voltage-mode output port, and a second small-signal current-mode port coupled to said first small-signal current-mode port.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.