OUTPUT BUFFER FOR A SWAPPABLE SINGLE CONDUCTOR INTERFACE

Organization Name

Inventor(s)

Robert Mark Englekirk of Littleton CO (US)

Arpita Moghe Chadha of San Diego CA (US)

OUTPUT BUFFER FOR A SWAPPABLE SINGLE CONDUCTOR INTERFACE

This abstract first appeared for US patent application 20240421817 titled 'OUTPUT BUFFER FOR A SWAPPABLE SINGLE CONDUCTOR INTERFACE

Original Abstract Submitted

circuits and methods for determining the characteristics of swappable pins in a peripheral in a 1-wire or similar single-conductor system, thereby allowing each one of two pins to be either an i/o pin (connected to an i/o line) or a cap pin (connected to a storage capacitor). embodiments may utilize a hybrid buffer circuit that utilizes an effectively bi-directional pfet pull-up device coupled between the swappable pins a and b. two open-drain nfets pull-down devices are used, one on either side of the pfet and coupled to a respective pin (a or b), but with only one nfet being selected to be operable based on pin-determination flag signals from the pin detection circuitry. such a hybrid buffer circuit would consume significantly less ic area than two complete conventional buffers, resulting in less leakage and less yield loss.