Patent ID: 8213531

Claim:
An apparatus for transmitting a signal in a semiconductor integrated circuit, the apparatus comprising: a multilevel transmission control block configured to output a plurality of bits of an input signal in serial or parallel according to whether a multilevel transmission operation is performed or not; and a signal processing block coupled with the multilevel transmission control block configured to selectively perform the multilevel transmission operation according to a form of the input signal, which is output in serial or parallel from the multilevel transmission control block; wherein the signal processing block is further configured to perform the multilevel transmission operation according to whether a multilevel transmission control signal is enabled or not, and when the multilevel transmission control signal is disabled, the multilevel transmission control block is further configured to only output signals to a first signal line, and when the multilevel transmission control signal is enabled, the multilevel transmission control block is further configured to output the signals to the first signal line and a second signal line.