Appeal No. 1997-1644 Page 2
Application No. 08/367,681
The invention at issue in this appeal increases the
operating speed of an output driver integrated circuit (IC).
The physical construction of ICs causes variations in the
inherent signal delays between the ICs’ output drivers and its
output pins. No matter how much the output drivers are
slowed, the signal delay to some output pins is longer than it
is to others.
The invention capitalizes on this phenomenon to speed
operation of an IC. More specifically, the invention provides
different amounts of slew-rate limiting to different output
drivers of the IC to ensure that all the ICs' output pins are
driven to change state at approximately the same time.
Reducing the output switching speed of only a few of the
output drivers, moreover, decreases inductive switching noise
and reduces power supply bounce.
Claim 9, which is representative for our purposes,
follows:
9. A semiconductor device, comprising:
a plurality of output drivers; and
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