A 256 mA 0.72 V ground bounce output driver

A new output driver design called modified asymmetrical slew rate (MASR) ou tput driver was proposed to reduce the simultaneous switching noise without sacrificing switching speed, for high speed and heavy loading applications . The driving capability of the output driver was designed to sink/source 6 4mA current @ V-OL/V-OH = 0.4V/4.6V, with 66pF and 50 Omega loading. When f our drivers switch simultaneously, the ground bounce was design to be less than 0.8 V. The performances of the conventional, controlled slew rate (CSR ), and MASR output drivers were analyzed by computer simulation. These thre e types of drivers were implemented with a 0.8 mu m CMOS process. The measu red ground bounce of the conventional driver is 1.22 V, while the ground bo unce of the MASR driver is reduced to 0.72 V. The propagation delays of the conventional and MASR drivers are the same. The performance of the MASR dr iver is better than that of the CSR driver in all aspects.