A D&T roundtable: challenges for low-power and high-performancechips

Microprocessor and other lC performance continues to improve at historic rates, with no visible end in sight for the next 10 years. However, we are starting to encounter a power wall. This is true for high-performance components as well as for low-power chips with a very limited energy budget offered by batteries. We need to find ways to manage power and energy consumption on all fronts-technology, design, and architecture-without compromising performance. Otherwise, we may face discontinuation of Moore's law for the semiconductor industry in the near future. This would be triggered not by any difficulty in the scaling of process technology but by formidable barriers posed by packaging and cooling, inefficacy of power delivery, and energy constraints dictated by battery technology, which is advancing at a very lukewarm pace     

Systematic design of wideband ΔΣ modulators for WiFi/WiMAX receivers

Modern multi-standard receivers in deep-submicron technologies pose significant design challenges on the analog baseband. Moving this analog filtering to the digital domain simplifies the design, yielding a process-scalable implementation. However, analog-to-digital converter (ADC) specifications now become more stringent and must be obtained by comprehending the standard and the system. Assuming a receiver NF of 5.96 dB and SNR degradation of 0.36 dB by the ADC, the proposed dual-mode WiFi/WiMAX receiver attains an input sensitivity of −74 dBm (20 MHz channel bandwidth). To accommodate the high dynamic range and the anti-alias rejection needed for the system, a Delta-Sigma (ΔΣ) ADC is proposed. Single-loop and Multi-Stage Noise-Shaping (MASH) architectures that achieve a SNR of 69 dB at a low oversampling ratio (OSR) of 8 for a conversion bandwidth of 40 MHz (108 Mbps, OFDM) are investigated at system level. Based on thermal noise, harmonic distortion, and power tradeoffs, a ΔΣ ADC design that meets the design specifications is presented.     

5-GHz 32-bit integer execution core in 130-nm dual-V/sub T/ CMOS

A 32-bit integer execution core containing a Han-Carlson arithmetic-logic unit (ALU), an 8-entry /spl times/ 2 ALU instruction scheduler loop and a 32-entry /spl times/ 32-bit register file is described. In a 130 nm six-metal, dual-V/sub T/ CMOS technology, the 2.3 mm/sup 2/ prototype contains 160 K transistors. Measurements demonstrate capability for 5-GHz single-cycle integer execution at 25/spl deg/C. The single-ended, leakage-tolerant dynamic scheme used in the ALU and scheduler enables up to 9-wide ORs with 23% critical path speed improvement and 40% active leakage power reduction when compared to a conventional Kogge-Stone implementation. On-chip body-bias circuits provide additional performance improvement or leakage tolerance. Stack node preconditioning improves ALU performance by 10%. At 5 GHz, ALU power is 95 mW at 0.95 V and the register file consumes 172 mW at 1.37 V. The ALU performance is scalable to 6.5 GHz at 1.1 V and to 10 GHz at 1.7 V, 25/spl deg/C.     

Desensitized CMOS Low-Noise Amplifiers

The minimum attainable noise figure for scaled- CMOS low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) is limited by impedance mismatches such as the well-known noise/power tradeoff. In this paper, we show that a power-constrained optimization of the device noise resistance parameter, R_n, significantly reduces the impact of mismatches and variations and leads to an almost simultaneous noise and power match. This process, called desensitization, makes the design largely immune to measurement and modeling errors and manufacturing variations, and significantly reduces frequency-dependent noise mismatches in wide-band LNAs. Measured data from devices and desensitized LNAs designed on 180-nm and 90-nm CMOS processes shows that: (1) a device size selected for optimum R_nmiddot is less sensitive to source impedance mismatches and provides a wide-band noise match; and (2) LNAs approach a simultaneous input and noise match, and exhibit significant improvements (ges 2x) in their wide-band noise performance.     

A 130-nm 6-GHz 256 × 32 bit leakage-tolerant register file

Describes a 256-word × 32-bit 4-read, 4-write ported register file for 6-GHz operation in 1.2-V 130-nm technology. The local bitline uses a pseudostatic technique for aggressive bitline active leakage reduction/tolerance to enable 16 bitcells/bitline, low-V_t usage, and 50% keeper downsizing. Gate-source underdrive of -V _cc on read-select transistors is established without additional supply/bias voltages or gate-oxide overstress. 8% faster read performance and 36% higher dc noise robustness is achieved compared to dual-V_t bitline scheme optimized for high performance. Device-level measurements in the 130-nm technology show 703× bitline active leakage reduction, enabling continued V_t scaling and robust bitline scalability beyond 130-nm generation. Sustained performance and robustness benefit of the pseudostatic technique against conventional dynamic bitline with keeper-upsizing is also presented     

A 64 GHz LNA With 15.5 dB Gain and 6.5 dB NF in 90 nm CMOS

This paper presents an integrated LNA for millimeter-wave applications implemented in 90 nm CMOS technology. Modeling methodology based solely on electromagnetic simulations, RC parasitic extraction and device measurements up to 20 GHz allows for ldquocorrect-by-constructionrdquo design at mm-wave frequencies and first-pass silicon success. The dual-stage cascode LNA has a peak gain of 15.5 dB at 64 GHz with a NF of 6.5 dB, while drawing 26mA per stage from 1.65 V. Output is 3.8 dBm. At , each stage draws 19 mA, with a peak gain and a NF of 13.5 dB and 6.7 dB, respectively. Measured results are in excellent agreement with simulations, proving the effectiveness of the proposed design methodology. A custom set-up for mm-wave NF measurement is also extensively described in the paper.     

A sub-130-nm conditional keeper technique

Increasing leakage currents combined with reduced noise margins significantly degrade the robustness of wide dynamic circuits. In this paper, we describe two conditional keeper topologies for improving the robustness of sub-130-nm wide dynamic circuits. They are applicable in normal mode of operation as well as during burn-in test. A large fraction of the keepers is activated conditionally, allowing the use of strong keepers with leaky precharged circuits without significant impact on performance of the circuits. Compared to conventional techniques, up to 28% higher performance has been observed for wide dynamic gates in a 130-nm technology. In addition, the proposed burn-in keeper results in 64% active area reduction     

Sub-500-ps 64-b ALUs in 0.18-μm SOI/bulk CMOS: design andscaling trends

In this paper, we present: 1) design of a single-rail energy-efficient 64-b Han-Carlson ALU, operating at 482 ps in 1.5 V, 0.18-μm bulk CMOS; 2) direct port of this ALU to 0.18-μm partially depleted SOI process; 3) SOI-optimal redesign of the ALU using a novel deep-stack quaternary-tree architecture; 4) margining for max-delay pushout due to reverse body bias in SOI designs; and 5) performance scaling trends of the ALU designs in 0.13-μm generation. We show that a direct port of the Han-Carlson ALU to 0.18-μm SOI offers 14% performance improvement after margining. A redesign of the ALU, using an SOI-favored deep-stack architecture improves the margined speedup to 19%. A 10% margin was required for the SOI designs, to account for reverse body-bias-induced max-delay pushout. Preconditioning the intermediate stack nodes in the dynamic ALU designs reduced this margin to 2%. Scaling the ALUs to 0.13-μm generation reduces the overall SOI speedup for both architectures to 9% and 16%, respectively, confirming the trend that speedup offered by SOI technology decreases with scaling     

A 90-nm CMOS Doherty power amplifier with minimum AM-PM distortion

A linear Doherty amplifier is presented. The design reduces AM-PM distortion by optimizing the device-size ratio of the carrier and peak amplifiers to cancel each other's phase variation. Consequently, this design achieves both good linearity and high backed-off efficiency associated with the Doherty technique, making it suitable for systems with large peak-to-average power ratio (WLAN, WiMAX, etc.). The fully integrated design has on-chip quadrature hybrid coupler, impedance transformer, and output matching networks. The experimental 90-nm CMOS prototype operating at 3.65 GHz achieves 12.5% power-added efficiency (PAE) at 6 dB back-off, while exceeding IEEE 802.11a -25 dB error vector magnitude (EVM) linearity requirement (using 1.55-V supply). A 28.9 dBm maximum Psat is achieved with 39% PAE (using 1.85-V supply). The active die area is 1.2 mm/sup 2/.     

Measurements and analysis of SER-tolerant latch in a 90-nm dual-V/sub T/ CMOS process

We designed a soft error rate (SER) tolerant latch utilizing local redundancy. We implemented a test chip containing both the standard and SER-tolerant latches in a 90-nm dual-V/sub T/ CMOS process. Accelerated measurements with a neutron beam at Los Alamos National Laboratory demonstrated 10/spl times/ better reliability of the SER-tolerant latch over the standard latch at no speed degradation. The worst case energy and area penalties were 39% and 44%, respectively. Both the energy and area penalties are negligible for standard-latch transistor sizes at least double the minimum width. We analyzed the effects of the recovery time, threshold voltage assignment, and leakage on the SER robustness. The proposed latch can improve reliability of critical sequential logic elements in microprocessors and other circuits.