A 32.75-Gb/s voltage mode transmitter with 3-tap FFE in 16nm CMOS

This paper describes the design of a highly flexible voltage-mode transmitter with 3-tap Feed Forward Equalization fabricated in a 16nm CMOS technology. The transmitter uses a dual regulator architecture to allow for independent control of swing, common-mode and equalization. The transmitter employs a hybrid impedance control scheme with both slice-based and analog impedance control loops. A FIR compensation circuit is used to improve deterministic jitter. The transmitter consumes 120.8mW, provides 0.25-0.9V
_pp
output swing, and achieves TJ of 6.49ps-pp and RJ of 220fs-rms at 32.75Gb/s.