Recent advances in ASIC-compatible circuit techniques for a SOC in newly emerging application areas: Invited paper

We review advances in ASIC-compatible circuits for emerging SOC areas. These applications require ubiquitously low-power consumption during standby mode while providing a required performance in active mode. Sub- or near-threshold circuits may provide a low-power solution. However, they have yet to show how they fit into overall SOC optimization including area and performance. Selectively introducing custom-circuit techniques with ASIC tool compatibility have proven very attractive in reducing both the power and the area of a SOC by extending its Dynamic Voltage-Frequency Scaling (DVFS) range down to a VDD of 0.5 V.