1-V power supply high-speed digital circuit technology with multithreshold-voltage CMOS

1-V power supply high-speed low-power digital circuit technology with 0.5-μm multithreshold-voltage CMOS (MTCMOS) is proposed. This technology features both low-threshold voltage and high-threshold voltage MOSFET´s in a single LSI. The low-threshold voltage MOSFET´s enhance speed performance at a low supply voltage of 1 V or less, while the high-threshold voltage MOSFET´s suppress the stand-by leakage current during the sleep period. This technology has brought about logic gate characteristics of a 1.7-ns propagation delay time and 0.3-μW/MHz/gate power dissipation with a standard load. In addition, an MTCMOS standard cell library has been developed so that conventional CAD tools can be used to lay out low-voltage LSI´s. To demonstrate MTCMOS´s effectiveness, a PLL LSI based on standard cells was designed as a carrying vehicle. 18-MHz operation at 1 V was achieved using a 0.5-μm CMOS process