Title :
Optimal supply and threshold scaling for subthreshold CMOS circuits
Author :
Wang, Alice ; Chandrakasan, Anantha P. ; Kosonocky, Stephen V.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract :
With technology scaling, power supply and threshold voltage continue to decrease to satisfy high performance and low power requirements. In the past, subthreshold CMOS circuits have been inadequate for high performance applications, but have been used in applications that require ultra low power dissipation. Many applications including medical and wireless applications, require ultra low power dissipation with low-to-moderate performance (10kHz-100MHz). In this work, using BSIM3 models, the performance and energy dissipation of 0.18-μm CMOS circuits for the range of Vdd = 0.1-0.6V and Vth = 0-0.6V are analyzed to show that subthreshold CMOS circuits can be used in low performance applications. A simple characterization circuit is introduced which can be used to evaluate the performance and energy dissipation for a given process under varying activity. These results are useful in circuit design by giving insight into optimal voltage supply and threshold voltage operation for a given application specification
Keywords :
CMOS integrated circuits; VLSI; circuit optimisation; circuit simulation; integrated circuit design; integrated circuit modelling; low-power electronics; 0 to 0.6 V; 0.1 to 0.6 V; 0.18 micron; 10 kHz to 100 MHz; BSIM3 models; application specification; characterization circuit; low power requirements; power supply; subthreshold CMOS circuits; technology scaling; threshold scaling; Circuit synthesis; Clocks; Delay; Dynamic voltage scaling; Energy dissipation; Leakage current; Performance analysis; Power dissipation; Power supplies; Threshold voltage;
Conference_Titel :
VLSI, 2002. Proceedings. IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Pittsburgh, PA
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-1486-3
DOI :
10.1109/ISVLSI.2002.1016866
