TY - JOUR
T1 - Digital computation in subthreshold region for ultralow-power operation
T2 - A device-circuit-architecture codesign perspective
AU - Gupta, Sumeet Kumar
AU - Raychowdhury, Arijit
AU - Roy, Kaushik
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received November 11, 2008; revised August 30, 2009 and October 2, 2009. Current version published January 20, 2010. This work was supported in part by SRC, DARPA and Boeing. S. K. Gupta and K. Roy are with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). A. Raychowdhury is with Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, OR 97124 USA (e-mail: [email protected]).
PY - 2010/2
Y1 - 2010/2
N2 - Ultralow-power dissipation can be achieved by operating digital circuits with scaled supply voltages, albeit with degradation in speed and increased susceptibility to parameter variations. However, operating digital logic and memory circuits in the subthreshold region (supply voltage less than the transistor threshold voltage) for ultralow-power operations requires device, circuit as well as architectural design optimizations, different from the conventional superthreshold design. This paper analyzes such optimizations from energy dissipation point of view and shows that it is feasible to achieve robust operation of ultralow-voltage systems. Operation with power supply as low as 60 mV is demonstrated. Techniques to reduce the impact of process variations on subthreshold circuits are also discussed. In addition, it is shown that subthreshold leakage current can be useful for other applications like thermal sensors.
AB - Ultralow-power dissipation can be achieved by operating digital circuits with scaled supply voltages, albeit with degradation in speed and increased susceptibility to parameter variations. However, operating digital logic and memory circuits in the subthreshold region (supply voltage less than the transistor threshold voltage) for ultralow-power operations requires device, circuit as well as architectural design optimizations, different from the conventional superthreshold design. This paper analyzes such optimizations from energy dissipation point of view and shows that it is feasible to achieve robust operation of ultralow-voltage systems. Operation with power supply as low as 60 mV is demonstrated. Techniques to reduce the impact of process variations on subthreshold circuits are also discussed. In addition, it is shown that subthreshold leakage current can be useful for other applications like thermal sensors.
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U2 - 10.1109/JPROC.2009.2035060
DO - 10.1109/JPROC.2009.2035060
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:75649123791
SN - 0018-9219
VL - 98
SP - 160
EP - 190
JO - Proceedings of the IEEE
JF - Proceedings of the IEEE
IS - 2
M1 - 5395762
ER -