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EE 587
SoC Design & Test
Partha Pande
School of EECS
Washington State University
pande@eecs.wsu.edu
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Power & Low Power Design
Physical Design Methodologies

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Clocked Logic Family
Domino circuits only implement noninverting logic
High activity
Better suited for large fanin gates
Ref: Dinesh Somasekhar and Kaushik Roy, Differential Current
Switch Logic: A Low Power DCVS Logic Family, IEEE Journal
of Solid-state Circuits, Vol. 31, No. 7, July 1996
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Clocked CVSL
The PMOS precharge
transistors to pull the inverter
inputs high during the low
phase of the clock
Outputs are evaluated in the
high phase of the clock
The weak PMOS feedback
prevents deterioration of the
high level at the inverter inputs
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SSDL
Sample set differential logic
(SSDL)
Complementary outputs are
driven using an inverter loop
Senses the differential levels set
up by the NMOS tree
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ECDL
Enabled/disabled CMOS
differential Logic
Avoids high power consumption
of SSDL
Pre charge low
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Differential Current Switch Logic (DCSL)
DCSL belongs to the class of clocked differential cascode
voltage switch logic circuits
It is a generic methodology which is applied to clocked DCVS
gates to reduce internal node voltage swings
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DCSL1
Differential current switch logic (DCSL)
The low going transition of Q
disconnects the NMOS tree from Q_b
by progressively cutting off transistor
T8
This limits the charge up of the internal
nodes in the NMOS tree
SPICE simulations show that the
internal node voltage swings for DCSL
are of the order of 1volt (supply voltage
5 v)


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Skewed CMOS
Fully complementary static logic
The sizes of the PMOS and NMOS transistors are adjusted to
enable one of the transitions to be faster than the other
Noise tolerance of skewed logic is better than the dynamic
circuits
Ref: A. Solomatnikov et. al. Skewed CMOS: Noise-Tolerant
High-Performance Low-Power Static Circuit Family, IEEE
Transactions on VLSI, Vol. 10, No. 4, August 2002
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Skewed CMOS
Comparable to
Domino, with a better
noise margin
Better for low
voltage, low power
applications
Fast high-to-low
transition gate should
be followed by fast
low-to-high transition
gate

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Inverter Trip Point
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Short Circuit Energy Vs. Skew
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Leakage Current Vs. Skew
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Multiple Threshold Voltage
Threshold Voltage is one of the most important parameters for
device and circuit design
For the active mode low Vth is preferred because of the higher
performance
For standby mode high Vth is useful for reduction of leakage
power
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Self-Adjusting Threshold Voltage Scheme
A leakage sensor senses a representative MOSFET and generates a control
signal to self-sub-bias circuit
Consider an nmos transistor
When the leakage current is higher than a certain value, the SSB will be triggered
and will reduce the substrate bias of all the other nmos transistors, which in turn
will increase the threshold voltage and reduce leakage current
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MTCMOS
In active mode, low-VT MOSFETs achieve high speed.
In standby mode when St'by signal is high, high-VT MOSFETs in series to
normal logic circuits cut off leakage current.


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Issues in MTCMOS
Virtual ground not actual ground (lose some noise margin)
Can increase width of sleep transistor to reduce voltage at virtual ground but
it will also increase subthreshold leakage and area of sleep transistor

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Variable Threshold-CMOS
Threshold voltage of both devices are increased by adjusting the body-bias
voltage in order to reduce subthreshold leakage current in standby mode
Requires twin-tub technology so that substrates of individual devices can be
adjusted


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Effect of Vth Hopping
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Use Higher VDD and VT for Memory

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HW/SW Control of System Power

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Dynamic Voltage Scaling
In dynamic supply voltage scaling, the logic chip is designed to
deliver maximum performance at the highest supply voltage
When the performance demand is low, the chip is operated at
lower voltage, delivering lower performance but with substantial
(quadratic) reduction in power
The logic chip could also detect the performance demand and
adjust frequency and supply voltage accordingly


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Static Supply Voltage Reduction
In static supply voltage reduction method, multiple supply voltages are used
Higher supply voltage is used for performance critical logic, which runs at higher
speeds, and consumes higher power.

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Summary
Major concern today is leakage power.
Need to exploit cooperation among levels:
Software, architecture, algorithm, system, EDA,
circuit, technology, assembly
Power-aware electronics opens up vast new applications
and market.