CMOS数字电路低功耗的层次化设计

随着芯片上可以集成越来越多的管子,电路规模在不断扩大,工作频率在不断提高,这直接导致芯片功耗的迅速增长,无论是从电路可靠性来看,还是从能量受限角度来讲,低功耗都已成为CMOS数字电路设计的重要内容。由于不同设计抽象层次对电路功耗的影响不同,对各有侧重的低功耗设计方法和技术进行了讨论,涉及到工艺,版图,电路,逻辑,结构,算法和系统等不同层次。在实际设计中,根据具体应用环境,综合不同层次全面考虑功耗问题,可以明显降低电路功耗。     

Gate-diffusion input (GDI): a power-efficient method for digital combinatorial circuits

Gate diffusion input (GDI) - a new technique of low-power digital combinatorial circuit design - is described. This technique allows reducing power consumption, propagation delay, and area of digital circuits while maintaining low complexity of logic design. Performance comparison with traditional CMOS and various pass-transistor logic design techniques is presented. The different methods are compared with respect to the layout area, number of devices, delay, and power dissipation. Issues like technology compatibility, top-down design, and precomputing synthesis are discussed, showing advantages and drawbacks of GDI compared to other methods. Several logic circuits have been implemented in various design styles. Their properties are discussed, simulation results are reported, and measurements of a test chip are presented.     

Leakage Current Reduction Using Subthreshold Source-Coupled Logic

The performance of subthreshold source-coupled logic (STSCL) circuits for ultra-low-power applications is explored. It is shown that the power consumption of STSCL circuits can be reduced well below the subthreshold leakage current of static CMOS circuits. STSCL circuits exhibit a better power–delay performance compared with their static CMOS counterparts in situations where the leakage current constitutes a significant part of the power dissipation of static CMOS gates. The superior control on power consumption, in addition to the lower sensitivity to the process and supply voltage variations, makes the STSCL topology very suitable for implementing ultra-low-power low-frequency digital systems in modern nanometer-scale technologies. An analytical approach for comparing the power–delay performance of these two topologies is proposed.      

Embedded Measurement of GHz Digital Signals With Time Amplification in CMOS

This paper examines an embedded low-power technique for the single-shot measurement of GHz digital signals. Two circuits will be demonstrated; the first is a rise time measurement core, while the second represents an embedded technique for the characterization of narrow pulses. Both circuits can be seen as general tools to increase the low-end time dynamic range measurements of digital events in CMOS. The circuits rely on a new fast voltage-crossing detector to convert the input information and condition it into same polarity edges, separated by the timing information to be measured. Those edges are then in turn stretched further using time amplification, making them easily detectable with low-resolution time-to-digital converters. Dynamic current generation techniques are used in the front-end detector to greatly reduce the power consumption. The proposed circuits are compact and introduce only a few tens of femtofarads capacitive loading. The circuits were implemented in a standard 0.18-$mu$m CMOS process. Experimental results show the feasibility of the proposed approach. Rise times of 1 ns and pulses as narrow as 78 ps were successfully captured in a single-shot measurement approach, with total power dissipation not exceeding a few milliwatts, in each of the two cases.      

Simultaneous power supply, threshold voltage, and transistor sizeoptimization for low-power operation of CMOS circuits

This paper demonstrates a new approach for minimizing the total of the static and the dynamic power dissipation components in a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) logic network required to operate at a specified clock frequency. The algorithms presented can be used to design ultralow-power CMOS logic circuits by joint optimization of supply voltage, threshold voltage and device widths. The static, dynamic and short-circuit energy components are considered and an efficient heuristic is developed that delivers over an order of magnitude savings in power over conventional optimization methods     

Low Power Design of High Speed CMOS Pulse Stream Neuron Circuit

The greatinformation processing power of human being' s neural systems has attract-ed a lotof attention of those who are dedicated to the implementation of Artificial NeuralNetworks(ANNs) ,which are expected to be of the same computat...     

A novel yield optimization technique for digital CMOS circuits design by means of process parameters run-time estimation and body bias active control

This work presents a novel approach to optimize digital integrated circuits yield referring to speed, dynamic power and leakage power constraints. The method is based on process parameter estimation circuits and active control of body bias performed by an on-chip digital controller. The associated design flow allows us to quantitatively predict the impact of the method on the expected yield in a specific design. We present the architecture scheme, the theoretical foundation, the estimation circuits used, and two application case studies, referring to an industrial 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS process data. The approach results to be remarkably effective at high operating temperature. In the presented case study, initial yields below 14% are improved to 86% by using a single controller and a single set of estimation circuits per die.     

Low Power Design of High Speed CMOS Pulse Stream Neuron Circuit

A new pulse stream neuron circuit is presented, which can be obtained in the digital CMOS process and combines both the merits of digital circuits and analog ones. The output is expressed by the frequency of the pulses with transfer characteristic, which is correspondent with the ideal sigmoid curve perfectly. Moreover, the pulse-active strategy is introduced into the design of this CMOS pulse stream neuron circuit for the first time in order to reduce the power dissipation, which is applicable to the low-power design of mixed-signal circuits,too. A simple technical process and compact architecture make this circuit work at a higher speed and with lower power dissipation and smaller area.     

Power minimization and technology comparisons for digitalfree-space optoelectronic interconnections

This paper investigates the design optimization of digital free-space optoelectronic interconnections with a specific goal of minimizing the power dissipation of the overall link, and maximizing the interconnect density. To this end, we discuss a method of minimizing the total power dissipation of an interconnect link at a given bit rate. We examine the impact on the link performance of two competing transmitter technologies, vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) and multiple quantum-well (MQW) modulators and their associated driver-receiver circuits including complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) and bipolar transmitter driver circuits, and p-n junction photodetectors with multistage transimpedance receiver circuits. We use the operating bit-rate and on-chip power dissipation as the main performance measures. Presently, at high bit rates (>800 Mb/s), optimized links based on VCSELs and MQW modulators are comparable in terms of power dissipation. At low bit rates, the VCSEL threshold power dominates. In systems with high bit rates and/or high fan-out, a high slope efficiency is more important for a VCSEL than a low threshold current. The transmitter driver circuit is an important component in a link design, and it dissipates about the same amount of power as that of the transmitter itself. Scaling the CMOS technology from 0.5 μm down to 0.1 μm brings a 50% improvement in the maximum operating bit rate, which is around 4 Gb/s with 0.1 μm CMOS driver and receiver circuits. Transmitter driver circuits implemented with bipolar technology support a much higher operating bandwidth than CMOS technology; they dissipate, however, about twice the electrical power. An aggregate bandwidth in excess of 1 Tb/s-cm² can be achieved in an optimized free-space optical interconnect system using either VCSELs or MQW modulators as its transmitters     

A novel noise optimization technique for inductively degenerated CMOS LNA

This paper proposes a novel noise optimization technique. The technique gives analytical formulae for the noise performance of inductively degenerated CMOS low noise amplifier (LNA) circuits with an ideal gate inductor for a fixed bias voltage and nonideal gate inductor for a fixed power dissipation, respectively, by mathematical analysis and reasonable approximation methods. LNA circuits with required noise figure can be designed effectively and rapidly just by using hand calculations of the proposed formulae. We design a 1.8 GHz LNA in a TSMC 0.25 pan CMOS process. The measured results show a noise figure of 1.6 dB with a forward gain of 14.4 dB at a power consumption of 5 mW, demonstrating that the designed LNA circuits can achieve low noise figure levels at low power dissipation.     

CMOS数字电路功耗分析及其应用

讨论了有关ＣＭＯＳ数字电路的功耗分析和低功耗逻辑综合的一些方法。研究了信号的翻转概率与信号概率之间的关系，并由此得到信号翻转次数的表达式。然后讨论了使平均功耗最优的组合逻辑电路优化中的一些方法，最后，提出了两个用于低功耗逻辑综合的基本定理。     

Impact of gate-oxide tunneling on mixed-signal design and simulation of a nano-CMOS VCO

Design optimization for performance enhancement in analog and mixed-signal circuits is an active area of research as technology scaling is moving towards the nanometer scale. This paper presents an approach towards the efficient simulation and characterization of mixed-signal circuits, using a 45 nm CMOS voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) with frequency divider as a case study. The performance characteristics of the analog and digital blocks in the circuit are simulated and the accuracy issues arising due to separate analog and digital simulation engines are considered. The tremendous impact of gate tunneling current on device performance is quantitatively analyzed with the help of an “effective tunneling capacitance”, which allows accurate modeling and simulation of digital blocks with almost analog accuracy. To meet the design specifications of the analog VCO using digital CMOS technology, we follow a design of experiments (DOE) approach. The functional specifications of the VCO optimized in this design are the center frequency and minimization of overall power consumption as well as minimization of power due to gate-oxide tunneling current leakage, a component that was not important in previous generations of CMOS technologies but is dominant at 45 nm and below. Due to the large number of available design parameter (gate-oxide thickness and transistor sizes), the concurrent achievement of all optimization goals is difficult. A DOE approach is shown to be very effective and a viable alternative to standard design exploration in the nanometer regime.     

2.5-V bipolar/CMOS circuits for 0.25-μm BiCMOS technology

An ECL circuit with an active pull-down device, operated from a CMOS supply voltage, is described as a high-speed digital circuit for a 0.25-μm BiCMOS technology. A pair of ECL/CMOS level converters with built-in logic capability is presented for effective intermixing of ECL with CMOS circuits. Using a 2.5-V supply and a reduced-swing BiNMOS buffer, the ECL circuit has reduced power dissipation, while still providing good speed. A design example shows the implementation of complex logic by emitter and collector dottings and the selective use of ECL circuits to achieve high performance     

冒险共振现象及其在CMOS电路最大功耗估计中的应用

随着集成电路工艺的不断提高，CMOS电路规模不断增大，功耗成为集成电路设计主要指标之一。文章首先以多位比较器为例，阐述了存在于部分多位电路功能块中的冒险共振现象；然后给出其在VLSI电路最大功耗估计中的应用。ISCAS85电路集实验结果证实了文章思路的有效性。     

Design techniques for low-voltage high-speed digital bipolarcircuits

This paper describes design techniques for multigigahertz digital bipolar circuits with supply voltages as low as 1.5 V. Examples include a 2/1 multiplexer operating at 1 Gb/s with 1.2 mW power dissipation, a D-latch achieving a maximum speed of 2.2 GHz while dissipating 1.4 mW, two exclusive-OR gates with a delay less than 200 ps and power dissipation of 1.3 mW, and a buffer/level shifter having a delay of 165 ps while dissipating 1.4 mW. The prototypes have been fabricated in a 1.5-μm 12-GHz bipolar technology. Simulations on benchmarks such as frequency dividers and line drivers indicate that, for a 1.5-V supply, the proposed circuits achieve higher speed than their CMOS counterparts designed in a 0.5-μm CMOS process with zero threshold voltage     

RF CMOS reliability simulations

We present a simulation approach to assess the reliability of an RF CMOS circuit under user conditions, based on existing DC degradation models for gate-oxide breakdown and hot-carrier degradation. The simulator allows for lifetime prediction of circuits that can withstand multiple breakdown events. Simulation results show that three power amplifiers with comparable initial circuit performance show an astronomic difference in reliability. The tool thus proves to be an asset in the analog design process.     

Adiabatic-CMOS/CMOS-adiabatic logic interface circuit

This paper describes the design of an adiabatic-CMOS/CMOS-adiabatic logic interface circuit for a group of low-power adiabatic logic families with a similar clocking scheme. The circuit provides interfacing between several recently proposed low-power adiabatic logic circuits and traditional digital CMOS circuits. One advantage of this design is that it is insensitive to clock overlap. With the proposed interface circuit, both adiabatic and CMOS logic circuits are able to co-exist on a single chip, taking advantage of the strengths of each approach in the design of low power systems.     

基于RTD与CMOS的新型数字电路设计

纳米电子器件RTD与CMOS电路结合,这种新型电路不仅保持了CMOS动态电路的所有优点,而且在工作速度、功耗、集成度以及电路噪声免疫性方面都得到了不同程度的改善和提高。文中对数字电路中比较典型的可编程逻辑门、全加器电路进行了设计与模拟,并在此基础上对4×4阵列纳米流水线乘法器进行了结构设计。同时讨论了在目前硅基RTD器件较低的PVCR值情况下实现相应电路的可行性。     

Power Reduction Techniques in Megabit DRAM's

Power dissipation in dynamic random-access memories (DRAM's) is described. Power reduction techniques are summarized and a comparison is made of NMOS and CMOS for individual circuits focusing on power dissipation for full- V/sub cc/ precharge and half- V/sub cc/ precharge, decoder, and clock generator. These results are then applied to actual 1-Mbit chips. The CMOS approach with a half-V/sub cc/ precharge is found to result in a power dissipation of just half that for NMOS, which is, verified through experiments on 1-Mbit CMOS and NMOS chips. Furthermore, from estimating power dissipation for DRAM chips larger than 1 Mbit, it is thought that the critical point for power-supply transition from the existing 5 V is around the 16-Mbit level.     

Switched-capacitor high-speed emulator for real-time fault location in electrical power systems

This research presents a discrete-time transmission line model based on the propagation of travelling waves. In this approach, the transmission line is emulated by means of many interconnected unit delay cells implemented with switched-capacitor (SC) circuits. The accuracy and limitations of this method is compared to existing transconductance–capacitor solutions and is evaluated in the frame of a novel power network fault location method based on the electromagnetic time-reversal principle. The impact of the non-ideal effects associated to analog CMOS SC circuits, such as amplifier finite gain, offset and switch charge injection is evaluated in the same context. A possible application of the model for the simulation of interconnected or multi-conductor lines is also discussed. After an AMS 0.35 µm process implementation, it is shown that the present method allows a fault location within 1% resolution and is a hundred times faster than nowadays digital solutions. This speed improvement allows a fault location within 160 ms, making thus real-time applications realistic.