A resonant-clock 200MHz ARM926EJ-STM microcontroller

An ARM926EJ-Strade microcontroller with a fully resonant clock distribution network and 16 KB data and instruction caches has been implemented in 130 nm bulk silicon. Workloads execute successfully across process and temperature corners, and at room temperature, typical-process chips run at clock speeds up to 200 MHz with 1.2 V supply. At resonance, the microcontroller core dissipates 0.23 mW/MHz, recovering 85% of the energy in its clock distribution network. Total power savings range from 20% to 35%, depending on application workload and computation profile.