An apparatus and method is disclosed for a limited swing line driver. A
driver circuit generates a voltage that is transmitted to a unity gain
voltage amplifier and a common source amplifier. A source-follower
circuit in the voltage amplifier is activated when the voltage reaches a
voltage threshold for an activating transistor, sending voltage to the
output of the common-source amplifier, resulting in an output with a
reduced swing. In an alternate embodiment, a variable-level reduced swing
line driver is disclosed that uses a transistor as a variable resister to
alter the threshold voltages and level control. A level control circuit
is further disclosed that controls one or more variable-level line
drivers.