Static Power Reduction Using Variation-Tolerant and Reconfigurable Multi-Mode Power Switches

Multithreshold CMOS is very effective for reducing standby leakage power during long periods of inactivity. Recently, a power-gating scheme was presented to support multiple power-off modes and reduce the leakage power during short periods of inactivity. However, this scheme can suffer from high sensitivity to process variations, which impedes manufacturability. We propose a new power-gating technique that is tolerant to process variations and scalable to more than two intermediate power-off modes. The proposed design requires less design effort and offers greater power reduction and smaller area cost than the previous method. In addition, it can be combined with existing techniques to offer further static power reduction benefits. Analysis and extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design.