A daisy chain of current-driven transmitters in inductive-coupling complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) links is presented. Transmitter power can be reduced since current is reused by multiple transmitters. Eight transceivers are arranged with a pitch of 20 µm in 0.18 µm CMOS. Transmitter power is reduced by 35% without sacrificing either the data rate (1 Gb/s/ch) or BER (<10-12) by using a 4-transmitter daisy chain. A coding technique for efficient use of daisy chain transmitters is also proposed. With the proposed coding technique, additional power reduction can be achieved.

The smart vision chip has a large potential for application in general purpose high speed image processing systems. In order to fabricate smart vision chips including photo detector compactly, we have proposed the application of three dimensional LSI technology for smart vision chips. Three dimensional technology has great potential to realize new biologically inspired systems inspired by not only the biological function but also the biological structure. In this paper, we describe our three dimensional LSI technology for biologically inspired circuits and the design of smart vision chips.