|Publication number||US6910146 B2|
|Application number||US 09/992,145|
|Publication date||Jun 21, 2005|
|Filing date||Nov 5, 2001|
|Priority date||Dec 31, 1999|
|Also published as||US20020083359|
|Publication number||09992145, 992145, US 6910146 B2, US 6910146B2, US-B2-6910146, US6910146 B2, US6910146B2|
|Inventors||Keith E. Dow|
|Original Assignee||Intel Corporation|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (11), Non-Patent Citations (1), Referenced by (29), Classifications (6), Legal Events (3)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This is a continuation-in-part application of Ser. No. 09/476,976 filed on Dec. 31, 1999 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,647,507.
This invention is in general related to chip-to-chip digital communications and more particularly to clock-based chip-to-chip communications.
Processor clock speeds in electronic systems are continuing to increase and show no signs of reaching a plateau. As a result, the bit rate in communications between different integrated circuit (i.e., IC) dies, also known as chips, in the system are forced to increase to maintain an optimum performance level in the system. One factor that limits the performance of a high speed system is timing variation, that is a difference in the timing of the occurrence of a particular signal transition, between the actual system and what was expected or designed for the system. Timing variations may be caused by a combination of one or more factors. These factors include those that are related to the manufacture of the system, such as variations in on-die device parameters, the geometry of printed wiring board (i.e., PWB) traces, and IC package transmission line length and impedance. Fatal system errors are more likely when timing variations exceed the levels which the system has been designed to tolerate. These levels are referred to here as ‘timing margin’.
As bit rates increase, timing margin, in terms of a maximum departure from a nominal timing or phase relationship between two signals, decreases. Any departure from a nominal phase relationship between a received data signal and a distributed clock signal of the system is referred to as clock-data ‘skew’. One way to improve the tolerance of a high bit rate system to such skew is to use source synchronous transmissions. In such a transmission, the transmitter IC die may synchronize each consecutive data symbol in a driven data signal with a corresponding, separate transition in a distributed clock signal. The data signal and the distributed clock signal are propagated from the transmitter IC die to other IC dies (that is receiving IC dies). To help reduce skew between the data and the distributed clock signals at the receiving end, the transmission lines that carry the data and clock signals between the transmitter and the receiver IC dies are designed to be ‘matched’. However, as bit rates continue to increase beyond several hundred MHz, the maximum skew that is tolerable by the logic function circuitry in a receiving IC die may be exceeded, even by such a source synchronous transmission. In other words, even though an attempt has been made to match the two transmission lines and transmit the data and clock information simultaneously at the design stage, it is possible that manufacturing process variations and/or operating factors (such as temperature and power supply variations) cause the, for instance, data signal to take much longer to reach the receiver than the distributed clock signal, such that the maximum, expected skew is exceeded.
When the system is initially designed, a nominal timing margin may be provided. For example, the nominal timing margin in a conventional, main memory (in this case, dynamic random access memory or DRAM) subsystem has been +/−125 picoseconds about a nominal phase relationship between data and clock signals. Thus, up to 125 picoseconds of skew can be tolerated by the logic functional circuitry, in either direction about an expected ‘zero picosecond’ skew. However, when the system has been manufactured and placed in operation, it is likely that the initial skew is not zero, but rather some significant fraction of the maximum +/−125 picoseconds. This means that the available timing margin of the actual, manufactured system, during normal operation, has been reduced and is not balanced in both directions.
A limited solution to forcing the actual electronic system to operate close to the zero picosecond (balanced) setting is to adjust the trace length of the data signal transmission line and/or the clock signal transmission line so that the initial skew is set to zero. Such a technique, however, requires the physical fine tuning of PWB traces and thus may increase the cost of manufacture. In addition, once the system has been manufactured and the trace lengths are fixed, it is still possible that the initial skew will change with operating parameters, thereby once again causing an imbalance and reduction in the available timing margin.
The invention is illustrated by way of example and not by way of limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements. It should be noted that references to “an” embodiment in this disclosure are not necessarily to the same embodiment, and they mean at least one.
A method and apparatus for increasing, and, in particular, balancing, the timing margin in chip-to-chip communications, under the control of processor executable instructions, is described. Referring to
The first IC die 110 is to drive one or more of the data transmission lines 122 with a sequence of outgoing data symbols according to a transmit clock signal Tclk. A driver 132 is used for this purpose, where the driver converts between on-die logic signaling and signaling levels that are needed on the data transmission lines 122. The driver 132 validates or “launches” each data symbol according to a predefined transition in the Tclk signal. For example, each outgoing symbol may be driven directly in response to a rising edge of a digital, Tclk signal.
As a receiving IC die, the first IC die 110 is to repeatedly sample a transmission line signal from one of the data transmission lines 122, to obtain a sequence of incoming data symbols according to a receive clock (i.e., Rclk) signal. As shown in
Although in the particular embodiment shown in
The first IC die 110 also includes a driver timing circuitry 136 to derive the Tclk signal from the distributed clock signal. According to an embodiment, the driver timing circuitry 136 is designed so that each of the outgoing data symbols is driven into the transmission lines 122 by the driver 132, according to a transmit delay immediately following each of a number of separate transitions of the distributed clock signal, respectively. In other words, the Tclk signal is synchronized to the distributed clock signal received at the input of the driver timing circuitry 136. Similarly, at the receiving end, the first IC die 110 includes receiver timing circuitry 138 to derive the Rclk signal from the distributed clock signal, so that each of the incoming data symbols is obtained by sampling according to a receive delay immediately following each of a number of separate transitions of the distributed clock signal, respectively. Thus, the Rclk signal is synchronized to the distributed clock signal at the input of the receiver timing circuitry 138.
According to an embodiment of an apparatus for increasing, and, in particular, balancing, the timing margin in chip-to-chip communications, the first IC die 110 further includes registers 137 and 139 that are coupled to store values to be received by an external input of the first IC die 110. In addition, variable delay elements 141 and 143 are coupled to adjust (1) a relative phase of the Tclk and distributed clock signals, and (2) a relative phase of the Rclk and distributed clock signals, respectively, according to the values stored in the registers 137, 139 respectively. The registers 137 and 139 may be written to in response to a processor 140 executing a number of instructions stored in a machine-readable memory such as non-volatile memory 142. These instructions may be part of a basic input/output system (i.e., BIOS) 144 which is part of the system software of the electronic system. The instructions, once executed, control a timing margin of the system particularly involving chip-to-chip communications between the first and second IC dies 110, 120. Access to the registers 137, 139 may be via a separate bus 143 between the processor 140 and the IC dies 110. Before describing processes for improving the timing margin,
Referring first to
Note that in the example above, the data signal is a binary waveform in that it can take on only one of two stable levels, a low voltage level and a high voltage level. In other embodiments, the data signal may be allowed more than two stable voltage levels if the chip-to-chip communications support multiple levels so that more than two different symbols can be transmitted and received. Thus, for the data signal which is a binary waveform, only two different symbols are defined, whereas in 4 pulse amplitude modulation (i.e., 4PAM) four different symbols, corresponding to four different stable, voltage levels in the data signal, are possible. In such a multilevel embodiment, a transition point between different stable levels may be used to define the transmit delay, similar to what is shown in
The data signal (containing outgoing data symbols) is to be driven into the data transmission lines 122 (see
Continuing to refer to
Referring back to
Similar to what has been described in the previous paragraph, a balance between Tsh and Th may be obtained entirely at the receiving end by advancing or delaying the Rclk signal appropriately, by setting the appropriate digital value in the register 139 (see FIG. 1). An embodiment of a process for improving the timing margin in a manufactured system by achieving such a balance is now described in connection with FIG. 4.
An exemplary set of discrete, Tclk and Rclk bias values are shown in
At the receiving end, a negative Rclk bias value means that the data signal is sampled earlier than ½ cycle after the clock crossing point, while a positive Rclk bias value means that the data signal is sampled later. Thus, for instance, to correct for the data symbols propagating faster than the distributed clock signal between the transmitting and receiving IC dies, either or both of the Tclk and Rclk bias values should be negative. On the other hand, to correct for the data being slower than the clock, either or both of the Tclk and Rclk bias values should be positive.
Referring now to
The above described operations 408-412 are repeated for all possible Tclk bias values, which may result in populating a row of an array, with pass or fail indications as shown in
With Tclk being set to the average passing value as described in the previous paragraph, the process continues with operation 424 in which the relative phase of the Rclk and distributed clock signals at the target IC die are set to, for instance, the lowest of a number of predetermined, discrete receive phase values (e.g. Rclk bias values such as those shown in FIG. 6). The process then continues with running a test of the communication link between the target IC die and a receiving IC die, by sending and receiving outgoing and incoming data symbols, respectively, at the relative phase settings of operations 420 and 424. These incoming and outgoing data symbols are then compared to determine whether the test was passed or failed by those relative phase settings (operation 428). Operations 424 and 428 are then repeated for all other receive phase values, and the results of the comparisons are recorded as pass or fail values which may then populate a column as shown in FIG. 6. Finally, in operation 436, the relative phase of the Rclk and distributed clock signals are set to a receive phase value that is closest to the average passing Rclk bias value as recorded in operation 432. Thus, for the example of
The comparison results shown in
Yet another technique for determining the relative phases which are closest to yielding a balanced timing margin is to compute a centroid of the two-dimensional area of passing values shown in FIG. 7. The centroid or “center of gravity” would lie approximately at the point marked ‘Y’ which is slightly to the right of and below the point marked ‘X’. Thus, according to the centroid calculation, the balanced timing margin may be obtained by a bias value that is greater than +22 picoseconds for Tclk and slightly greater than +29 for Rclk. Of course, by selecting a greater number of discrete Tclk and Rclk values, the system will be able to move even closer to yielding the balanced timing margin due to the finer resolution available.
Although a larger number of discrete Rclk and Tclk bias values provides finer resolution to reach the balanced timing margin, a tradeoff is that it will take a longer period of time to perform the tests of the communication link at the different combinations of Tclk and Rclk bias settings. As a reference point for determining how long the process described above might take in practice, consider the embodiment in which the target IC die includes a DRAM storage array and the receiving IC die includes a memory controller. Also, assume that, now referring back to
The above described embodiments of the invention in
The flow diagram in
Referring now to
In addition to compensating by adjusting the strength of the pull down transistor, the timing margin may be improved by adjusting the clock to data skew as described above in the various embodiments. The third technique for improving timing margin is to adjust a variable reference voltage that is generated on-chip at the receiving end and is used by an analog comparator to determine the value of a received symbol. For example, referring now to
Having described the three different compensation techniques for improving timing margin, the process of
Once the signaling imbalance has been compensated for by adjusting the drive strength of the pull down or pull up transistors, the process proceeds with operation 908 in which a write cycle is performed from the first IC die to the second IC die via the transmission lines, to write data to the second IC die. The process then proceeds with operation 912 which changes the clock-data skew in the positive direction until there is a failure while reading the data back from the second IC die using the first IC die. In a similar manner, the process continues with operation 916 in which the clock data skew is changed in the negative direction, until there is a failure while reading the data back from the second IC die. These latter two operations result in a “passing window” being determined. The operating point for the clock-data skew in the system is then set to be the midpoint of this window, between the most positive failure point (operation 912) and the most negative failure point (operation 916), as operation 920. This completes the clock-data skew compensation technique.
Having completed two out of the three automatic compensation techniques as described above, the process continues with operation 924 in which the third compensation technique is used to help further improve the timing margin in the system. Thus, with the system operating under the drive strength set in operation 904 and the clock-data skew set in operation 920, the process continues with operation 924 in which an on-die voltage reference that is used to compare against a transmission line signal level to detect a received data symbol, is changed while running a read cycle. A voltage reference failure point is reached when the wrong data is read from the second IC die. The on-die voltage reference is then swept in the opposite direction until wrong data is read. Thus, a highest (largest voltage) failure point and lowest failure point are obtained for the voltage reference in operation 924. Finally, the process continues with operation 928 in which the operating point for the on-die voltage reference is set to be the midpoint between the highest and lowest failure points obtained in operation 924.
Using the combination of the three compensation techniques as described above, it is expected that timing margin will be improved significantly over the use of any one of the techniques by themselves. The order in which the three techniques were implemented, however, should be observed. Note how the strength of the pull up or pull down transistors were adjusted first, and then with the system running with these pull up/pull down settings, the clock-data skew was adjusted. Finally, with the pull up/pull down settings and the clock-data skew settings in place, the final adjustment to the voltage reference was performed.
The embodiments described above refer to first and second IC dies 110 and 120 (see
Regarding the embodiment of
To summarize, various embodiments of a method and apparatus for increasing timing margin under control of processor executable instructions have been described. In the foregoing specification, the invention has been described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments thereof. It will, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may be made thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
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|U.S. Classification||713/500, 714/724, 324/750.3|
|Nov 5, 2001||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: INTEL CORPORATION, CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:DOW, KEITH E.;REEL/FRAME:012338/0322
Effective date: 20011102
|Dec 18, 2008||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4
|Nov 21, 2012||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 8