The Lutonium: a sub-nanojoule asynchronous 8051 microcontroller

Author

Martin, Alain J. ; Nyström, Mika ; Papadantonakis, Karl ; Pénzes, Paul I. ; Prakash, Piyush ; Wong, Catherine G. ; Chang, Jonathan ; Ko, Kevin S. ; Lee, Benjamin ; Ou, Elaine ; Pugh, James ; Talvala, Eino-Ville ; Tong, James T. ; Tura, Ahmet

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

fYear

2003

fDate

12-15 May 2003

Firstpage

14

Lastpage

23

Abstract

We describe the Lutonium, an asynchronous 8051 microcontroller designed for low Et². In 0.18 μm CMOS, at nominal 1.8 V, we expect a performance of 0.5 nJ per instruction at 200 MIPS. At 0.5 V, we expect 4 MIPS and 40 pJ/instruction, corresponding to 25,000 MIPS/Watt. We describe the structure of a fine-grain pipeline optimized for Et² efficiency, some of the peripherals implementation, and the advantages of an asynchronous implementation of a deep-sleep mechanism.

Keywords

CMOS digital integrated circuits; asynchronous circuits; microcontrollers; 0.18 micron; 1.8 V; 200 MIPS; 4 MIPS; CMOS; Lutonium; asynchronous implementation; deep-sleep mechanism; fine-grain pipeline; peripherals implementation; sub-nanojoule asynchronous 8051 microcontroller; Circuits; Computer science; Decoding; Delay; Energy consumption; Energy efficiency; Microcontrollers; Microprocessors; Pipelines; Threshold voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Asynchronous Circuits and Systems, 2003. Proceedings. Ninth International Symposium on

ISSN

1522-8681

Print_ISBN

0-7695-1898-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ASYNC.2003.1199162

Filename

1199162