“A 10-Gb/s Compact Low-Power Serial I/O with DFE-IIR Equalization in 65-nm CMOS,” Deemed Best 2009 JSSC Paper [People]

The 2009 IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits Best Paper Award was given to Byungsub Kim of MIT and Yong Liu, Timothy O. Dickson, John F. Bulzacchelli, and Daniel J. Friedmann of IMB T.J. Watson Research for "A 10-Gb/s Compact Low-Power Serial I/O With DFE-IIR Equalization in 65-nm CMOS," published in the December 2009 issue (vol. 44, no. 12, pp. 3,526-3,538). According to IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC) Editor-in-Chief, this work was judged the best because it "demonstrates ingenuity in the implementation of a serial I/O equalization that incorporates IIR (infinite impulse response) filtering embedded into the DFE (decision feedback equalizer) loop. The design is elegant and effective for dense back-end-of-line copper wire channels that are particularly difficult to equalize because of their high loss and reflections. [The IIR/DFE combination allows power-efficient equalization with fewer taps.] This paper also features a new termination method that does not require 50-V back terminations, also allowing reduction of power. Impressive measured results are given, including very good immunity to crosstalk."