Low swing drivers based on charge redistribution

Low power on-chip interconnect technique is important for deep submicron SOC design. In this paper, a novel low swing drivers scheme based on charge redistribution is proposed. Significant reduction in power dissipation is achieved by dividing the full signal swing into several lower ones. The proposed circuits are especially suitable for driving multi-branch transmission wires by utilizing higher efficiency of charges. Compared with the reference design, the new scheme can reduce power dissipation by more than 66% as shown by HSPICE simulation while driving three branches. The proposed circuits have been fabricated and its effectiveness has been verified by measurement results.