A Wide-Range Folded-Tuned Dual-DLL-Based Clock-Deskewing Circuit for Core-to-Core Links

Without any dummy element for phase compensation, a clock-deskewing circuit (CDC) using a master-slave delay-locked loop (MSDLL) configuration is presented to synchronize the clocks for cascaded core-to-core links. The dual-locking CDC provides mismatch-insensitive compensation of interconnected wires, input/outputs (IOs), and clock buffers. The MSDLL incorporates the digital-selection folded coarse-fine voltage-controlled delay line (FCF-VCDL) to provide a wide range operations. The proposed FCF-VCDL scheme is constructed from the combination of positive and negative gains of different VCDLs. In addition, a power-controlled regime is employed in the FCF-VCDL to adaptively lower the power dissipation. Implemented with 0.18- μm CMOS, the CDC can provide 20 MHz to 2 GHz with the help of FCF-VCDLs. The 2-GHz clock jitter is 6.78 ps (pk-pk), and the total power dissipation is 20 mW under a 1.8-V supply.