A 112-GB/S PAM4 Transmitter in 16NM FinFET

This work reports a 112-Gb/s low power voltage-mode transmitter (TX) with four-tap feed forward equalization (FFE), designed and fabricated in 16nm FinFET technology. The design includes a hybrid impedance controller with dual regulator architecture for independent swing, common-mode and equalization control. The 56-Gb/s 4:1 multiplexer (MUX) array together with an automatic phase alignment technique is proposed to minimize output jitter. The TX consumes 345 mW and provides 0.6 to 1-Vpp output swing. The PAM4 TX achieves 130-fs random jitter (RJ) with ratio of level mismatch (RLM) > 0.963.