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US 7,352,234 B2Granted
Current control technique
AssigneeRambus Inc.
InventorsBilly Wayne Garrett, Jr., Michael Tak-Kei Ching, William F. Stonecypher, Andy Peng-Pui Chan, Matthew M. Griffin
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An output driver circuit and current control technique to facilitate high-speed buses with low noise is used to interface with high-speed dynamic RAMs (DRAMs). The architecture includes the following components: an input isolation block (120), an analog voltage divider (104), an input comparator (125), a sampling latch (130), a current control counter (115), and a bitwise output driver (output driver A 107 and output driver B 111).
Claims17
A system comprising:
- a controller to provide a command that initiates a calibration mode of operation;
- and
- an integrated circuit memory device including,
- a drive circuit to output a drive voltage in response to the command that initiates the calibration mode of operation, and
- an adjust circuit to adjust an output voltage setting of the drive voltage based on a comparison of a reference voltage and a voltage derived from the drive voltage,
- wherein the command that initiates the calibration mode of operation of the integrated circuit memory device is a register read command.
3 more elements
A system comprising:
- a memory controller;
- and
- a dynamic random access memory device including,
- a register to store a value that is representative of a voltage swing setting of an output driver, and
- a counter to update a count value in response to a signal that indicates a direction to adjust the count value, wherein the voltage swing setting of the output driver is adjusted based on the count value during a memory refresh operation of the dynamic random access memory device.
2 more elements
A system comprising:
- a memory controller to output data;
- and
- an integrated circuit memory device to store the data, the integrated circuit memory device including,
- an output driver to output a signal with an amount of voltage swing to the memory controller,
- a register to store a value that is representative of a voltage swing setting of the output driver,
- a counter to store a count value that is used to adjust the voltage swing sefting in response to a signal that indicates a direction to adjust the count value, wherein:
- the amount of voltage swing is adjusted in a first direction when a voltage level exceeds a reference voltage;
- and
- the amount of voltage swing is adjusted in a second direction when the reference voltage exceeds the voltage level,
- wherein the integrated circuit memory device includes a multiplexer coupled to the register and the counter, wherein the multiplexer is used to bypass the register and apply the count value as the voltage swing setting of the output driver.
7 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.