Enhanced ground bounce noise reduction in a low-leakage CMOS multiplier

In this paper, various parameters are used to reduce leakage power, leakage current and noise margin of circuits to enhance their performance. A multiplier is proposed with low-leakage current and low ground bounce noise for the microprocessor, digital signal processors (DSP) and graphics engines. The ground bounce noise problem appears when a conventional power-gating circuit transits from sleep-to-active mode. This paper discusses a reduction in leakage current in the stacking power-gating technique by three modes – sleep, active and sleep-to-active. The simulation results are performed on a 4 × 4 carry-save multiplier for leakage current, active power, leakage power and ground bounce noise, and comparison made for different nanoscales. Ground bounce noise is limited to 90%. The leakage current of the circuit is decimated up to 80% and the active power is reduced to 31%. We performed simulations using cadence virtuoso 180 and 45 nm at room temperature at various supply voltages.     

Estimation of high performance in Schmitt triggers with stacking power‐gating techniques in 45 nm CMOS technology

In the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) nanoscale technology ground bounce noise and power consumption are becoming important metric. In presented paper, low leakage Schmitt trigger circuits are proposed for wave shaping or cleaning process with low ground bounce noise. Schmitt trigger play important role in communication electronics. Power‐gating and stacking power‐gating techniques have provided for maintaining the parameter of Schmitt trigger. An ideal approach has been investigated with stacking power‐gating technique. For further reduction in peak of ground bounce noise during sleep to active (power) mode transition, we have performed simulations using cadence specter 45 nm standard CMOS technology at nominal temperature (27°C) with supply voltage V_dd = 0.7 V and input voltage vary from 0.7 V to 1.5 V. The simulation results show that a proposed design provide efficient 6 T and 4 T Schmitt triggers in term of minimum leakage power (8.18 fW), active power (17.80 pW), ground bounce noise (1.65 μV) and propagation delay (1.98 ns), transconductance (4.51 × 10^?14 S), voltage gain (29.44 dB), hysteresis width (11.07 V) and efficiency (64.68%). Reported devices use for low‐power communication systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design of a Flexible Reactivation Cell for Safe Power-Mode Transition in Power-Gated Circuits

Power-gating is one of the most promising and widely adopted solutions for controlling sub-threshold leakage power in nanometer circuits. Although single-cycle power-mode transition reduces wake-up latency, it develops large discharge current spikes, thereby causing IR-drop and inductive ground bounce for the neighboring circuit blocks, which can suffer from power plane integrity degradation. We propose a new reactivation solution that helps in controlling power supply fluctuations and achieving minimum reactivation times. Our structure limits the turn-on current below a given threshold through a sequential activation of the sleep transistors (STs), which are connected in parallel and sized using a novel optimal sizing algorithm. We also introduce a distributed physical implementation, which allows minimum layout disruption after ST insertion and minimizes routing congestion.     

Integrating operation scheduling and binding for functional unit power-gating in high-level synthesis

Power-gating-aware design has been an active area of research in the last decade, aiming at reducing power dissipation while meeting a desired system throughput. In this study, an algorithm integrating both scheduling and binding processes is developed with the functional unit (FU) power-gating technique, to achieve maximum leakage energy reduction under both performance and resource constraints. Firstly, the possible leakage energy reductions of all idle intervals are analyzed by evaluating the operation mobilities. Secondly, a split network indicating the leakage energy reduction in each idle interval is constructed, and a min-cost flow-based algorithm is conducted to this network to evaluate the total leakage energy saving from power-gating FUs; operations are scheduled to the clock cycles and bound to FUs with a maximization of leakage energy saving. Finally, proper FUs are clustered under power domain constraints to maximize the leakage energy saving while reducing the area and wirelength penalties for fine grain power-gating. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms in saving leakage energy.     

Reducing Ground-Bounce Noise and Stabilizing the Data-Retention Voltage of Power-Gating Structures

Power gating is one of the most effective techniques in reducing leakage power, which increases exponentially with device scaling. However, large ground bounces during abrupt changes of power mode may cause unwanted transitions in neighboring circuits, which should still be operating normally. We analyzed this ground-bounce noise and reduced it with novel power-gating structures that utilize holistic integrated device-circuit-architecture approaches. We control the amount of charge in the intermediate nodes of the circuit that passes through the sleep transistors during the wake-up transition and stabilize the minimum virtual power supply voltage required for data retention. These techniques have been proven in silicon using 65-nm bulk CMOS technology.     

A reliable ground bounce noise reduction technique for nanoscale CMOS circuits

Power gating is the most effective method to reduce the standby leakage power by adding header/footer high-V_TH sleep transistors between actual and virtual power/ground rails. When a power gating circuit transitions from sleep mode to active mode, a large instantaneous charge current flows through the sleep transistors. Ground bounce noise (GBN) is the high voltage fluctuation on real ground rail during sleep mode to active mode transitions of power gating circuits. GBN disturbs the logic states of internal nodes of circuits. A novel and reliable power gating structure is proposed in this article to reduce the problem of GBN. The proposed structure contains low-V_TH transistors in place of high-V_TH footer. The proposed power gating structure not only reduces the GBN but also improves other performance metrics. A large mitigation of leakage power in both modes eliminates the need of high-V_TH transistors. A comprehensive and comparative evaluation of proposed technique is presented in this article for a chain of 5-CMOS inverters. The simulation results are compared to other well-known GBN reduction circuit techniques at 22 nm predictive technology model (PTM) bulk CMOS model using HSPICE tool. Robustness against process, voltage and temperature (PVT) variations is estimated through Monte-Carlo simulations.     

Process variation aware dual-Vth assignment technique for low power nanoscale CMOS design

This paper presents a novel sensitivity-based, transistor-level, dual threshold voltage (V_th) assignment technique for the design of low power nanoscale CMOS circuits. The proposed technique is based on the Plackett-Burman Design of Experiment method (PB-DOE) in which sensitivity of each transistor to delay variation due to change in its V_th is obtained. The various paths in the circuit are categorized into process sensitive and process-insensitive paths. Transistors in the process sensitive paths are assigned a high V_th to reduce the leakage power without affecting performance. The application of the proposed technique to ISCAS-85 C17 benchmark circuit shows 20% reduction in the leakage power as compared to conventional gate-level dual-V_th assignment technique. Moreover, it is shown that the proposed algorithm can be easily extended to assign dual gate length circuits to achieve a further 20% reduction in the leakage power. The robustness of the proposed technique against process variations is demonstrated with extensive Monte Carlo Simulations. The versatility of the proposed approach to reduce the leakage power for a general CMOS circuit is demonstrated using a Manchester carry chain adder.     

Applying partial power-gating to bit-sliced network-on-chip

In the many-core systems, network-on-chip (NoC) serves as an efficient and scalable architecture to connect numerous on-chip resources, whereas it encounters the crisis of the increasing leakage power as technology is continually scaling down. Power-gating which is a representative low-power technique can be utilized to mitigate the increasing leakage power, but the disconnection problem suffered in the conventional power-gated NoC may severely affect network performance. In this paper, we propose a novel partial power-gating approach to avoid the performance loss caused by the disconnection. Firstly, we utilize the asymmetrical bit-slicing scheme to split router into two slices. After the bit-slicing of router datapath, the wide slices can be switched off to save some leakage power by using partial power-gating, but all narrow slices should be kept in ever-active state to avoid the disconnection. Next, owing to the slicing of router datapath, we redefine the packet format for the packet׳s slicing and transferring, and present two essential conversion modules to achieve packet׳s slicing and reassembling. In the synthetic traffic simulation, our design gains considerable power-saving at low-load and exhibits better performance behavior than the conventional power-gated design. The application simulation shows that our design can averagely save 27.5% of total power compared with the baseline design, and reduce 45.0% packet latency on average when compared with the conventional power-gated design. On balance, the bit-sliced NoC with partial power-gating has a better tradeoff between performance and power-efficiency.     

Defect Detection Using Quiescent Signal Analysis

I_DDQ or steady state current testing has been extensively used in the industry as a mainstream defect detection and reliability screen. The background leakage current has increased significantly with the advent of ultra deep submicron technologies. This increased background leakage noise makes it difficult to differentiate defect-free devices from those with defects that draw significantly small amount of currents. Therefore it is impossible to use single threshold I_DDQ testing for today’s technologies. Several techniques that improve the resolution of I_DDQ testing have been proposed to replace the single threshold detection scheme. However, even these techniques are suffering from loss of resolution that is required for detection of subtle defects in the presence of leakage currents in excess of a few mA. All these techniques use a single I_DDQ measurement for detection and thus the scalability of these techniques is limited. Quiescent Signal Analysis (QSA) is a novel I_DDQ defect detection and diagnosis technique that uses I_DDQ measurements at multiple chip supply pads. Implicit in our methodology is a leakage calibration technique that scales the total leakage current over multiple simultaneous measurements. This helps in decreasing the background leakage component in individual measurements and thus increases the resolution of this technique to subtle defects. Defect detection is accomplished by applying linear regression analysis to the multiple supply port measurements and using outlier analysis to identify defective devices. The effectiveness of this technique is demonstrated in this paper using simulation experiments on portion of a production power grid. Predicted chip size and leakage values from the International Technology Roadmap for semiconductors (ITRS) are used in these experiments. One of the other major concerns expressed in ITRS is that of significant increase in intra-die process variations. The performance of the proposed technique in presence of such variations is evaluated using three different intra-die process variation distribution models.     

Sleep switch dual threshold voltage domino logic with reduced subthreshold and gate oxide leakage current

A circuit technique is proposed in this paper for simultaneously reducing the subthreshold and gate oxide leakage power consumption in domino logic circuits. PMOS-only sleep transistors and a dual threshold voltage CMOS technology are utilized to place an idle domino logic circuit into a low leakage state. Sleep transistors are added to the dynamic nodes in order to reduce the subthreshold leakage current by strongly turning off all of the high threshold voltage transistors. Similarly, the sleep switches added to the output nodes suppress the voltages across the gate insulating layers of the transistors in the fan-out gates, thereby minimizing the gate tunneling current. The proposed circuit technique lowers the total leakage power by 88 to 97% as compared to the standard dual threshold voltage domino logic circuits. Similarly, a 22 to 44% reduction in the total leakage power is observed as compared to a previously published sleep switch scheme in a 45 nm CMOS technology.     

LECTOR: a technique for leakage reduction in CMOS circuits

In CMOS circuits, the reduction of the threshold voltage due to voltage scaling leads to increase in subthreshold leakage current and hence static power dissipation. We propose a novel technique called LECTOR for designing CMOS gates which significantly cuts down the leakage current without increasing the dynamic power dissipation. In the proposed technique, we introduce two leakage control transistors (a p-type and a n-type) within the logic gate for which the gate terminal of each leakage control transistor (LCT) is controlled by the source of the other. In this arrangement, one of the LCTs is always "near its cutoff voltage" for any input combination. This increases the resistance of the path from V/sub dd/ to ground, leading to significant decrease in leakage currents. The gate-level netlist of the given circuit is first converted into a static CMOS complex gate implementation and then LCTs are introduced to obtain a leakage-controlled circuit. The significant feature of LECTOR is that it works effectively in both active and idle states of the circuit, resulting in better leakage reduction compared to other techniques. Further, the proposed technique overcomes the limitations posed by other existing methods for leakage reduction. Experimental results indicate an average leakage reduction of 79.4% for MCNC'91 benchmark circuits.     

Lector with Footed-Diode Inverter: A Technique for Leakage Reduction in Domino Circuits

Leakage power consumption is a major technical problem faced in nanometer or deep submicron CMOS circuit technology. A new circuit technique based on “lector stacking” is proposed in this paper for reducing the subthreshold and gate oxide leakage currents in the idle and non-idle modes of operation for domino circuits. In this technique a p-type and an n-type leakage control transistor (LCT) are introduced between the pull-up and pull-down network, and the gate of one is controlled by the source of the other. For any combination of inputs, one of the LCTs will operate near its cut-off region and will increase the resistance between supply voltage and ground, resulting in reduced leakage current. Lector stacking retains the logic state during the idle mode as in the conventional footerless domino logic. Furthermore, the leakage current is suppressed at the output inverter circuit by adding a diode-footed transistor below the n-type transistor of the inverter, offering a more resistive path between supply voltage and ground.The proposed circuit technique for AND2, OR2, OR4, and OR8 circuits reduces the active power consumption by 13.66 % to 44.45 % and by 12 % to 33 % at the low and high die temperatures, respectively, compared to the standard footerless domino logic circuits. During idle mode for the same logic gates, 1.64 % to 79.39 % and 1.2 % to 35.19 % reduction of leakage current is observed with low and high inputs at 25 °C and 110 °C respectively. Similarly, during non-idle mode 0.94 % to 99.3 % and 1.57 % to 98.58 % is observed with low and high inputs at 25 to 110 °C, respectively, when compared to standard footerless domino logic circuits.     

PMOS-Only Sleep Switch Dual-Threshold Voltage Domino Logic in Sub-65-nm CMOS Technologies

A circuit technique is proposed in this paper for simultaneously reducing the subthreshold and gate oxide leakage power consumption in domino logic circuits. Only p-channel sleep transistors and a dual-threshold voltage CMOS technology are utilized to place an idle domino logic circuit into a low leakage state. Sleep transistors are added to the dynamic nodes in order to reduce the subthreshold leakage current by strongly turning off all of the high-threshold voltage transistors. Similarly, the sleep switches added to the output nodes suppress the voltages across the gate insulating layers of the transistors in the fan-out gates, thereby minimizing the gate tunneling current. The proposed circuit technique lowers the total leakage power by up to 77% and 97% as compared to the standard dual-threshold voltage domino logic circuits at the high and low die temperatures, respectively. Similarly, a 22% to 44% reduction in the total leakage power is observed as compared to a previously published sleep switch scheme in a 45-nm CMOS technology. The energy overhead of the circuit technique is low, justifying the activation of the proposed sleep scheme by providing a net savings in total energy consumption during short idle periods.     

Composite effects of reflections and ground bounce for signal line through a split power plane

The signal propagating along a microstrip line over a slot on the power plane will suffer from composite effects of reflected noise by a discontinuity in signal return path and ground bounce between power and ground planes. A new equivalent circuit model is proposed and simulations are performed for multilayer structures to characterize these composite effects. An experimental setup is devised to demonstrate significant coupling between signal lines due to the slot-induced ground bounce. Favorable comparison between the simulation and measured results validates the proposed equivalent circuit model and analysis approach.     

High-density data-retention power gating structure using a four-terminal double-gate device

This paper presents a new power gating structure with robust data retention capability using only one single double-gate device to provide both power gating switch and virtual supply/ground diode clamp functions. The scheme reduces the transistor count, area, and capacitance of the power gating structure, thus improving circuit performance, power, and leakage. The scheme is compared to the conventional power gating structure via mixed-mode physics-based two-dimensional numerical simulations. Analysis of virtual ground bounce for the proposed scheme is also presented.     

Gate leakage current reduction in IP3 SRAM cells at 45 nm CMOS technology for multimedia applications

We have presented an analysis of the gate leakage current of the IP3 static random access memory (SRAM) cell structure when the cell is in idle mode (performs no data read/write operations) and active mode (performs data read/write operations), along with the requirements for the overall standby leakage power, active write and read powers. A comparison has been drawn with existing SRAM cell structures, the conventional 6T, PP, P4 and P3 cells. At the supply voltage, V_DD = 0.8 V, a reduction of 98%, 99%, 92% and 94% is observed in the gate leakage current in comparison with the 6T, PP, P4 and P3 SRAM cells, respectively, while at V_DD = 0.7 V, it is 97%, 98%, 87% and 84%. A significant reduction is also observed in the overall standby leakage power by 56%, the active write power by 44% and the active read power by 99%, compared with the conventional 6T SRAM cell at V_DD = 0.8 V, with no loss in cell stability and performance with a small area penalty. The simulation environment used for this work is 45 nm deep sub-micron complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, t_ox = 2.4 nm, V_thn = 0.22 V, V_thp = 0.224 V, V_DD = 0.7 V and 0.8 V, at T = 300 K.     

Leakage Biased pMOS Sleep Switch Dynamic Circuits

In this brief, a low-overhead circuit technique is proposed to simultaneously reduce subthreshold and gate-oxide leakage currents in domino logic circuits. pMOS sleep transistors and a dual threshold voltage CMOS technology are utilized to place an idle domino logic circuit into a low leakage state. A sleep transistor added to the dynamic node strongly turns off all of the high threshold voltage transistors. Similarly, a sleep switch added to the output inverter exploits the initially high subthreshold and gate-oxide leakage currents for placing a circuit into an ultimately low leakage state. The proposed circuit technique lowers the total leakage power by 56.1% to 97.6% as compared to standard dual threshold voltage domino logic circuits. Similarly, a 4.6% to 50.6% reduction in total leakage power is observed as compared to a previously published sleep switch scheme in a 45-nm CMOS technology     

Reduction in Reflections and Ground Bounce for Signal Line Over Slotted Power Plane Using Differential Coupled Microstrip Lines

This paper investigates the noise reduction in the slot-induced ground bounce noise by using differential signaling. An efficient 2-D finite-difference time-domain method together with equivalent circuits for both the differential line and the slot is established and simulations are performed for a three-layer structure to characterize the ground bounce coupling. A simple model is then proposed to understand how the differential coupled microstrip lines can help reduce ground bounce. Different factors which affect noise reduction are investigated, such as the coupling coefficient, rising time, skew of differential signaling, and structure asymmetry in slotline. An experimental setup is devised to demonstrate the noise coupling between signal lines due to the slot-induced ground bounce and significant noise reduction by employing differential signaling. A favorable comparison between the simulation and measured results validates the proposed equivalent circuit model and analysis approach.      

Sulfide passivation of GaAs power diodes

The feasibility of reducing the leakage currents of GaAs power diodes by chemically treating their surfaces in solutions of (NH₄)₂S in isopropanol is investigated. It is established that after chemical surface treatment the leakage current decreases more as the immersion time in the solution is increased (eightfold reduction) and also with an increase in the time of application of a reverse voltage U _z =400 V (2.5-fold reduction). Fiz. Tekh. Poluprovodn. 33, 716–718 (June 1999)     

Highly reliable and low-power magnetic full-adder designs for nanoscale technologies

The MTJ-based circuits have been considered as a candidate for next generation digital integrated circuits thanks to their attractive features such as nonvolatility, low leakage current, high endurance, and CMOS integration compatibility. However, incurred energy and delay by reconfiguration of their employed conventional MTJs limit their application. Besides, the issue of read-disturbance is another challenge in such MTJ-based circuit designs. In this article, a new magnetic-based full-adder (MFA) circuit based on a new three-terminal two-in-one magnetic tunnel junction (TIO-MTJ) cell is proposed. Comparing with the previous MFA circuits, the proposed circuit offers a lower energy for the write operation and also a disturbance-free reading. Two improved structures based on the proposed MFA are also suggested to obtain the advantages of nonvolatility for the power-gating architectures and also radiation hardening for the radiation harsh environments.