A 0.5-V power-supply scheme for low-power system LSIs using multi-Vth SOI CMOS technology

This paper proposes a novel power-supply scheme suitable for 0.5-V operating silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS circuits. The system contains an on-chip buck DC-DC converter with over 90% efficiency, 0.5-V operating logic circuits, 100-MHz operating flip-flops at 0.5-V power supply, and level converters for the interface between the 0.5-V operating circuit and on-chip digital-to-analog (D/A) converters or external equipment. Based on the theory, the values of on-resistance and threshold voltage of SOI transistors are clarified for the 0.5-V/10-mW output DC-DC converter, which satisfies both high efficiency and low standby power. The proposed flip-flop can hold the data during the sleep with the use of the external power supply, while maintaining high performance during the active. The level converter comprises dual-rail charge transfer gates and a CMOS buffer with a cross-coupled nMOS amplifier to operate with high speed even in a conversion gain of higher than 6, where the conversion gain is defined as the ratio of the output and input signal swings. The test chip was fabricated for the 0.5-V power supply scheme by using multi-V_th SOI CMOS technology. The experimental results showed that the buck DC-DC converter achieved a conversion efficiency of 91% at 0.5-V/10-mW output with stable recovery characteristics from the sleep, and that the dual-rail level converter operated with a maximum data rate of 300 Mb/s with the input signal swing of 0.5 V.