Professional Documents
Culture Documents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER-1
INTRODUCTION
Static Power Dissipation: This is the power dissipation due to leakage currents which flow through a
transistor when no transactions occur and the transistor is in a steady state. Leakage power depends on gate length and oxide thickness. It varies exponentially with threshold voltage and other parameters. Reduction of supply voltages and threshold
3
voltages for MOS transistors, which helps to reduce dynamic power dissipation, becomes disadvantageous in this case. The sub-threshold leakage current increases exponentially, thereby increasing static power dissipation. The main components of leakage current in a MOS transistor are:
Figure 1.2 Static CMOS Leakage sources Reverse-biased junction leakage current: Junction leakage occurs from the source or drain to the substrate through the reverse-biased diodes when the transistor is off. Gate induced drain leakage: This is caused due to the high field effect in the drain junction of MOS transistors. It is made worse by high drain to body voltage and high drain to gate voltage. Gate direct tunneling leakage: Gate leakage flows from the gate through the oxide insulation layer to the substrate. Direct tunneling current is significant for low oxide thickness. The gate leakage of a PMOS device is typically one order of magnitude smaller than that of an NMOS device with identical Tox and Vdd. Punch-through: Occurs when the drain voltage is high and the drain and source depletion regions approach each other. In the punch-through condition, the gate totally loses the control of the channel current and the sub-threshold slope starts to degrade. Sub-threshold (weak inversion) leakage: This is the drain to source current of a transistor operating in the weak inversion region, when gate to source voltage (VGS) is below the transistor threshold voltage (Vth). Gate oxide tunneling, punch-through, GIDL and band-to-band tunneling are due to the high electric field. For the low voltage low power CMOS circuits at current technology, sub-threshold leakage is the dominant component of the leakage current.
[ ( ) * (
] (1.1)
)+
is the carrier mobility; Cox is the gate oxide capacitance per unit area; W and L denote the transistor width and length; is the thermal voltage at temperature T; is the sub-threshold swing coefficient of the transistor; is the gate to source voltage of the transistor; is the zero-bias threshold voltage; is the body effect where is the linearized body effect coefficient; and
is the Drain Induced Barrier Lowering (DIBL) coefficient. is the drain to source voltage of the transistor.
(1.2)
Equation 1.2 gives the total leakage power for all the transistors. Dynamic power consumption was previously (at 0.18 technology and above) the single largest concern for low-power chip designers since dynamic power accounted for 90% or more of the total chip power. Therefore, many previously proposed techniques, such as voltage and frequency scaling etc., focused on dynamic power reduction. However, as the feature size shrinks, e.g., to 0.09 and 0.065, static power has become a great challenge for current and future technologies. Based on International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) report, the subthreshold leakage power dissipation of a chip may exceed dynamic power dissipation for deep sub-micron technologies. One of the main reasons causing the leakage power increase is increase of subthreshold leakage power. When technology feature size scales down, supply voltage and threshold voltage also scales down. Sub-threshold leakage power increases exponentially as threshold voltage decreases. Furthermore, the structure of the short
5
channel device lowers the threshold voltage even lower. In addition to sub-threshold leakage another contributor to leakage power is gate-oxide leakage power due to the tunneling current through the gate-oxide insulator. Since gate-oxide thickness will be reduced as technology decreases, in nanoscale technology, gate-oxide leakage power may be comparable to sub-threshold leakage power if not handled properly. Minimization of sub-threshold leakage is the primary goal in this thesis.
Although there are many low-leakage techniques existing, the best prior lowleakage technique in terms of leakage power reduction, the sleep transistor technique, loses logic state during sleep mode. Therefore, the sleep transistor technique requires non-negligible time to wake-up the device from the sleep mode. In an emergency calling situation to use cell phone, this wake-up time may not be acceptable. Therefore, an ultra low-leakage technique that can save state even in non-active mode can be quite important in nanoscale technology. In this thesis, a novel circuit structure named LECTOR, a new remedy for designers in terms of static power is provided. The LECTOR has a novel structure that reduces leakage current while saving exact logic state. LECTOR uses two additional transistors, in a path from supply to ground, which are self-controlled. In short, like the sleep and zigzag approaches, our approach also obtains the leakage power reduction but with an advantage of maintaining exact logic states. Table 1.1 shows the technology scaling of the components and the estimated power consumption. The number of transistors per circuit will continue to increase as predicted by Moores law, whereas the transistor sizes will continue to shrink. Despite a decreased supply voltage, the total power will continue to increase.
7
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Technology node [nm] 90 65 42 65 38 65 34 45 30 45 27 45 24 32 21 32 19
Printed Gate Length 48 [nm] Transistors [M] Chip Size [mm2] Voltage Supply [V] Internal [GHz] Total Power [W] 98 88 1.2 Number 193
386
386
386
773
773
773
1546 1546
88 1.1 12.3
140 1 15
111 1 17
88 1 20
140 0.9 22
111 0.9 28
Frequency 6.7
104
111
116
119
119
125
137
137
Chapter 4: Applying LCPMOS This chapter explores various implementations of LCPMOS approach. The implementation includes generic logic circuits. For each implementation of LCPMOS, comparisons with respective base cases and with LECTOR are carried out. Chapter 5: LCPMOS Experimental Results This chapter discusses the experimental results from various applications of the LCPMOS approach.
10
CHAPTER-2
PREVIOUS WORK
Modern technologies are suffering from a dramatic increase in leakage current. Constant scaling dictates that the supply voltage has to be reduced when downsizing the technology feature size. Low threshold voltage devices are used to maintain the required current drive and to satisfy performance specifications. Low threshold devices have caused a dramatic increase in leakage current. A direct and live solution for that is to utilize low threshold devices in the critical path and high threshold devices elsewhere. The threshold voltage can be controlled utilizing the well bias of the device in the so called Variable Threshold CMOS (VTCMOS). A technique for leakage control is power gating, which turns off the devices by cutting off their supply voltage. This technique makes use of bulky NMOS and/or PMOS device (sleep transistor) in the path between the supply voltage and ground. The sleep transistor is turned on when the circuit is active and turned off when the circuit is in idle state with the help of sleep signal. This creates virtual power and ground rails in the circuit. Hence, there is a significant detrimental effect on the switching speed when the circuit is active. The identification of the idle regions of the circuit and the generation of the sleep signal need additional hardware capable of predicting the circuit states accurately. This additional hardware consumes power throughout the circuit operation even when the circuit is in an idle state to continuously monitor the circuit state and control the sleep transistors. The use of multiple threshold voltage CMOS (MTCMOS) technology for leakage control is another technique. The transistors of the gates are at low threshold voltage and the ground is connected to the gate through a high-threshold voltage NMOS gating transistor. The logical function of a gating transistor is similar to that of a sleep transistor. The existence of reverse conduction paths tend to reduce the noise margin or in the worst case may result in complete failure of the gate. Moreover, there is a performance penalty since high-threshold transistors appear in series with all the switching current paths. A variation of MTCMOS technique is the Dual Vt technique, which uses transistors with two different threshold voltages. Low-threshold transistors are used for the gates on the critical path and high-threshold transistors are used for those not in the critical path. It reduces the
11
noise margin or in worst case may result in complete failure of the gate. In both MTCMOS and Dual methods, additional mask layers for each value of threshold voltage are required for fabricating the transistors selectively according to their assigned threshold voltage values. It is a complicated task to deposit two different oxides thickness, which makes the fabrication process complex. In addition to these limitations, the techniques discussed above suffer from turning-on latency, that is, when the idle subsections of the circuit are reactivated, they cannot be used immediately because some time is needed before the sub-circuit returns to its normal operating condition. The latency for power gating is typically a few cycles, and for Dual technology, is much higher. Also, these techniques are not effective in controlling the leakage power when the circuit is in active state. Techniques for leakage power reduction can be grouped into two categories: (i) (ii) State-saving techniques where circuit state (present value) is retained State-destructive techniques where the current Boolean output value of the circuit might be lost. A state-saving technique has an advantage over a state-destructive technique in that with a state-saving technique the circuitry can immediately resume operation at a point much later in time without having to somehow regenerate state.
12
Since all transistors are placed in between two parallel rows of continuous VDD and GND, stack approach design forces an increase in the number of transistors and decrease in transistor width.
For example, the zigzag technique in Figure 2.4 assumes that the input A is asserted such that the output values result as shown in the figure. If the output is 1, then a pull-down sleep transistor is applied; if the output is 0, then a pull-up sleep transistor is applied. By applying, prior to going to sleep, the particular input pattern chosen prior to chip fabrication, the zigzag technique can prevent floating. Although the zigzag technique retains the particular state chosen prior to chip fabrication, any other arbitrary state during regular operation is lost in power-down mode. Although the zigzag technique can reduce wake-up cost, the zigzag technique still loses state. Thus, any particular state (from prior to going to sleep) which is needed upon wakeup must be regenerated somehow. The technique may need extra circuitry to generate a specific input vector (in case reset values are not used for sleep mode input vector).
15
(a)
(b)
Figure 2.6 Sleepy Stack (a) active mode (b) sleep mode The sleepy stack technique has a structure merging the forced stack technique and the sleep transistor technique. Figure 2.6 shows a sleepy stack inverter. The sleepy stack technique divides existing transistors into two transistors each typically with the same width W1 half the size of the original single transistors width W0 (i.e., W1 = W0/2), thus maintaining equivalent input capacitance. The sleepy stack inverter in Figure 2.6(a) uses W/L = 3 for the pull-up transistors and W/L = 1.5 for the pull-down transistors, while a conventional inverter with the same input capacitance would use W/L = 6 for the pull-up transistor and W/L = 3 for the pull-down transistor (assuming n = 2p). Then sleep transistors are added in parallel to one of the transistors in each set of two stacked transistors. Half size transistor width of the original transistor (i.e., we use W0/2) is used for the sleep transistor width of the sleepy stack. Although using of W0/2 for the width of the sleep transistor, changing the sleep transistor width may provide additional tradeoffs between delay, power and area. Sleepy Stack operation Below is an explanation how the sleepy stack works during active mode and during sleep mode, along with leakage power saving using the sleepy stack structure. The sleep transistors of the sleepy stack operate similar to the sleep transistors used in the sleep
16
transistor technique in which sleep transistors are turned on during active mode and turned off during sleep mode. Figure 2.6 depicts the sleepy stack operation using a sleepy stack inverter. During active mode (Figure 2.6(a)), S = 0 and S = 1 are asserted, and thus all sleep transistors are turned on. This sleepy stack structure can potentially reduce circuit delay in two ways. First, since the sleep transistors are always on during active mode, the sleepy stack structure achieves faster switching time than the forced stack structure; specifically, in Figure 2.6(a), at each sleep transistor drain, the voltage value connected to the sleep transistor source is always ready and available at the sleep transistor drain, and thus current flow is immediately available to the low-Vth transistors connected to the gate output regardless of the status of each transistor in parallel to the sleep transistors. Furthermore, we can use high-Vth transistors (which are slow but 1000 times or so less leaky), for the sleep transistors and the transistors parallel to the sleep transistors (see Figure 2.6) without incurring large delay increase. During sleep mode (Figure 2.6(b)), S = 1 and S = 0 are asserted, and so both of the sleep transistors are turned off. Although the sleep transistors are turned off, the sleepy stack structure maintains exact logic state. The leakage reduction of the sleepy stack structure occurs in two ways. First, leakage power is suppressed by high-Vth transistors, which are applied to the sleep transistors and the transistors parallel to the sleep transistors. Second, two stacked and turned off transistors induce the stack effect, which also suppresses leakage power consumption. By combining these two effects, the sleepy stack structure achieves ultra-low leakage power consumption during sleep mode while retaining exact logic state. The price for this, however, is increased area.
Figure 2.7 Leakage Feedback approach For the sleep, zigzag, sleepy stack and leakage feedback approaches, dual Vth technology can be applied to obtain greater leakage power reduction. Since high-Vth results in less leakage but lowers performance, high-Vth is applied only to leakage reduction transistors, which are sleep transistors, and any transistors in parallel to the sleep transistors; on the other hand, low-Vth is applied to the remaining transistors to maintain logic performance.
18
The basic problem with traditional CMOS is that the transistors are used only in their most efficient and naturally inverting way: namely, PMOS transistors connect to VDD and NMOS transistors connect to GND. It is well known that PMOS transistors are not efficient at passing GND; similarly, it is well known that NMOS transistors are not efficient at passing VDD. However, to maintain a value of 1 in sleep mode, given that the 1 value has already been calculated, the sleepy keeper approach uses this output value of 1 and an NMOS transistor connected to VDD to maintain output value equal to 1 when in sleep mode. As shown in Figure 2.8, an additional single NMOS transistor placed in parallel to the pull-up sleep transistor connects VDD to the pull-up network. When in sleep mode, this NMOS transistor is the only source of VDD to the pull-up network since the sleep transistor is off. Similarly, to maintain a value of 0 in sleep mode, given that the 0 value has already been calculated, the sleepy keeper approach uses this output value of 0 and a PMOS transistor connected to GND to maintain output value equal to 0 when in sleep mode. For this sleepy keeper approach to work, all that is needed is for the NMOS connected to VDD and PMOS connected to GND to be able to maintain proper logic state. Consider figure 2.8. Note that there is a sleepy keeper PMOS transistor connecting GND to the pull-down network. When in sleep mode, this PMOS transistor is the only source of GND since the sleep transistor is off. On the other hand, there is an additional single NMOS transistor connecting VDD to the pull-up network. During sleep mode, this NMOS transistor is the only source of VDD which is the dual case of the PMOS transistor case explained above. Sleepy keeper transistors (the NMOS connected to VDD and the PMOS connected to GND) are not used to dynamically change the output voltage but instead only use them to maintain an already calculated output voltage. Specifically only a few clock cycles after entering sleep to a few clock cycles prior to exiting sleep do the sleepy keeper transistors acts as the sole connection to keep the output voltage unchanged. The sleep transistor is turned on when the circuit is active and turned off when the circuit is in idle state with the help of sleep signal. This creates virtual power and ground rails in the circuit. Hence, there is a significant detrimental effect on the switching speed when the circuit is active. The identification of the idle regions of the circuit and the generation of the sleep signal need additional hardware capable of predicting the circuit states accurately. Additional hardware used to provide the sleep signal increases the area
19
requirement of the circuit. This technique creates a negative effect when the circuit is operating in active mode. This additional hardware consumes power throughout the circuit operation even when the circuit is in an idle state to continuously monitor the circuit state and control the sleep transistors.
Figure 2.9 Generalized structure for leakage controlled gates The generalized structure of leakage controlled gates using lector technique which introduces two self controlled transistors between pull up and pull down network. There by increases the resistance in path from Vdd to ground. But the circuit becomes bulky. The area overhead in implementation of lector is as shown in section 2.7.2.
20
Figure 2.10 LECTOR CMOS Gate Figure 2.10 illustrates the topology of a LECTOR CMOS gate. Two Leakage Control Transistors (LCTs), LCT1 and LCT2, are introduced between nodes N1 and N2. The gate terminal for each LCT is controlled by the source of the other. Hence, these LCTs act as self-controlled stacked transistors. No external control circuitry is required using the LECTOR implementation. The introduction of LCTs increases the resistance of the path from Vdd to Gnd, thereby reducing leakage.
21
23
CHAPTER-3
LCPMOS TECHNIQUE
3.1 INTRODUCTION
The basic idea behind this approach for reduction of leakage power is the effective stacking of transistors in the path from supply voltage to ground. This is based on the observation that a state with one transistor OFF in a path from supply voltage to ground is far less leaky. In LCPMOS technique one leakage control transistor (one p-type) is introduced between pull-down and ground circuit within the logic gate for which the gate terminal of leakage control transistor (LCT) is controlled by the output of the circuit itself.
Figure 3.1 illustrates the topology of a LCPMOS CMOS gate. One Leakage Control Transistor (LCT), is introduced between pull down network and ground. The gate terminal of LCT is controlled by the output of circuit itself. No external control circuitry is required using the LCPMOS implementation. The introduction of LCT increases the resistance of the path from pull down network (PDN) to Gnd, which increases the resistance from Vdd to Gnd, thereby reducing leakage.
24
Figure 3.2 LCPMOS based CMOS NOT gate Leakage Control PMOS (LCPMOS) technique is illustrated with the case of a NOT gate. A CMOS NOT gate with the addition of one leakage control transistor is shown in Figure 3.2 (we later refer to it as the LCPMOS NOT gate). As the NOT logic is satisfied which can be seen through the input output graphs of LCPMOS based NOT gate, thus it is clearly observed that insertion of one leakage control transistor between the Pull down network and ground path does not affect the basic characteristics of NOT gate.
Figure 3.3 LCPMOS based CMOS NAND gate Thus, the introduction of LCT increases the resistance of the path from Vdd to ground. This also increases the propagation delay of the gate. To reduce this hostile effect, the transistors of LCT gate are sized such that the propagation delay is equal to its conventional counterpart. The transistors of the LCT NAND gate are sized to study its effect on the propagation delay of the gate. Also, we have tried to adjust the widths of all the transistors of the LCT NAND gate such that its propagation delay is almost equal to that of a conventional NAND gate. (We refer to this gate as Iso-LCT NAND gate.) The widths of PMOS and NMOS transistors, except LCT transistor, used in simulation of gates are set to two and three times the minimum feature width of the respective process variation. In the previous technique discussed, the sleep transistors have to be able to isolate the power supply and/or ground from the rest of the transistors of the gate. Hence, they need to be made bulkier dissipating more dynamic power. This offsets the savings yielded when the circuit is idle. Moreover, this technique is input-vector dependent and needs
26
additional circuitry to monitor and control the switching of sleep transistors. Thus, it consumes power in both active and idle states. In comparison, LCPMOS is vector independent and the required control signals are generated within the gate. Forced stacks have 100% area overhead. LECTOR requires exactly two additional transistors for every path from supply voltage to ground irrespective of the logic function realized by the gate. In comparison, LCPMOS requires only one additional transistor for every path from pull down network to ground irrespective of the logic function realized by the gate. The loading requirements of the gate with forced stacks are huge and depend on the number of additional transistors added. In comparison, the loading requirement with LCT is much lower and is a constant. Hence, the performance degradation is insignificant in the case of LCPMOS, and we overcome the major drawback faced by forced stack and LECTOR techniques. Figure 3.3 shows the general scheme for converting any SCCG gate to leakage-controlled gate.
27
Schematics are being designed using Tanner S-Edit tool. Schematics are used to obtain the net lists of test circuits. Schematics are to be created using any process parameters. And the width and length of the transistors both NMOS and PMOS are varied for various technologies. Spice commands are used for generating the power and input output values. W-edit generates the graphs for power and input output values. The power consumptions for LCPMOS circuits are measured with varying the LCT width as mentioned in Table 3.1.
WIDTH Technology Length (in m) Normal transistors NMOS 180nm 90nm 65nm L (0.18) L (0.09) L(0.065) 4L 4L 4L PMOS 8L 8L 8L Leakage Control Transistor PMOS L, L L, L L, L
The supply voltage for various technologies are considered as mentioned in the Table 3.2 Technology Supply Voltage 180nm 1.8V 90nm 1.1V 65nm 0.9V
Table 3.2 Vdd parameter The threshold voltages for NMOS and PMOS are to be maintained as shown in the table 3.3 for various technologies Technology 180nm 90nm 65nm NMOS (V) 0.3999 0.2607 0.22 Table 3.3 Threshold voltage parameter
28
Figure 3.5 Experimental Methodology Static power consumption is measured for all the CMOS circuits in the technologies considered for the particular circuits. Dynamic Power Dynamic power is measured by asserting sets of input vectors in S-EDIT. The input vectors include all the possible input combinations. The dynamic power is determined by considering the average of all the power dissipations obtained for all the possible input combinations
29
30
CHAPTER-4
APPLYING LCPMOS
Figure 4.1 NOT Gate A NOT gate is shown in Figure 4.1. The functionality of NOT can be given through its truth table as shown in table 4.1. INPUT A 0 1 OUTPUT Z 1 0
Table 4.1 NOT Truth Table The transistor-level schematic of NOT is as shown in figure 4.2. For the realization of transistor-level schematic of NOT, the PMOS should be arranged in series in the Pull-Up network and NMOS should be arranged in series in the Pull-Down network.
31
The sizes of the transistor in the NOT gate are maintained as mentioned in chapter 3. The NOT schematics that are designed through the Tanner S-EDIT for the base case (conventional NOT), LECTOR NOT and LCPMOS NOT are shown in figure 4.3 (a) and figure 4.3 (b) and 4.3(c).
32
PMOS_1: Normal PMOS transistors in Pull-Up network NMOS_1: Normal NMOS transistors in Pull-Down network PMOS_2: Leakage Control PMOS Transistor (LCT1) for Pull-Up network NMOS_2: Leakage Control NMOS Transistor (LCT2) for Pull-Down network
33
Figure 4.3 (c) LCPMOS NOT PMOS_1: Normal PMOS transistors in Pull-Up network NMOS_1: Normal NMOS transistors in Pull-Down network PMOS_2: Leakage Control PMOS Transistor (LCT)
4.1.2. Universal Gates NAND and NOR are called UNIVERSAL GATES since any logic can be implemented using either of the gates. 4.1.2.1. NAND Gate
Figure 4.4 2-input NAND Gate A 2-input NAND gate is shown in Figure 4.5. The functionality of NAND can be given through its truth table as shown in table 4.2.
34
INPUT A 0 0 1 1 B 0 1 0 1
OUTPUT Z 1 1 1 0
Table 4.2 NAND Truth Table The transistor-level schematic of NAND is as shown in figure 4.2. For the realization of transistor-level schematic of NAND, the PMOS should be arranged in parallel in the Pull-Up network and NMOS should be arranged in series in the PullDown network.
Figure 4.5 CMOS NAND Schematic The sizes of the transistor in the NAND gate are maintained as mentioned in chapter 3. Dynamic Power For a 2-input NAND gate, as there are four (i.e., 22) possible input combinations, four input vectors are considered. Therefore to measure the dynamic power of NAND gate, the average of the power dissipation of all the four input vectors (i.e., (0, 0), (0, 1), (1, 0), (1, 1)) is to be considered.
35
The NAND schematics that are designed through the Tanner S-EDIT for the base case (conventional NAND), LECTOR NAND and LCPMOS are shown in figure 4.6 (a) and figure 4.6 (b) and 4.6(c).
PMOS_1, PMOS_2: Normal PMOS transistors in Pull-Up network NMOS_1, NMOS_2: Normal NMOS transistors in Pull-Down network PMOS_3: Leakage Control PMOS Transistor (LCT1) for Pull-Up network NMOS_3: Leakage Control NMOS Transistor (LCT2) for Pull-Down network
Figure 4.6 (c) LCPMOS NAND PMOS_1, PMOS_2: Normal PMOS transistors in Pull-Up network NMOS_1, NMOS_2: Normal NMOS transistors in Pull-Down network PMOS_3: Leakage Control PMOS Transistor (LCT) To verify the designed transistor level schematic and the net list obtained from the schematic correctness, we have gone through the simulation waveforms through the W-EDIT
4.1.2.2. NOR Gate A 2-input NOR gate is shown in Figure 4.7. The functionality of NOR can be given through its truth table as shown in table 4.3.
37
The transistor-level schematic of NOR is as shown in figure 4.8. For the realization of transistor-level schematic of NOR, the PMOS should be arranged in series in the Pull-Up network and NMOS should be arranged in parallel in the Pull-Down network.
Figure4.8 CMOS NOR Schematic The sizes of the PMOS and NMOS transistors in the NOR gate are maintained as mentioned in chapter 3. Dynamic Power For a 2-input NOR gate, as there are four (i.e., 22) possible input combinations, four input vectors are considered. Therefore to measure the dynamic power of NOR gate, the average of the power dissipation of all the four input vectors (i.e., (0, 0), (0, 1), (1, 0), (1, 1)) is to be considered.
38
The NOR schematics that are designed through the Tanner S-EDIT for the base case (conventional NOR), LECTOR NOR and LCPMOS NOR are shown in figure 4.9 (a) and figure 4.9 (b) and 4.9(c).
39
Figure 4.9 (b) LECTOR NOR PMOS_1, PMOS_2: Normal PMOS transistors in Pull-Up network NMOS_1, NMOS_2: Normal NMOS transistors in Pull-Down network PMOS_3: Leakage Control PMOS Transistor (LCT1) for Pull-Up network NMOS_3: Leakage Control NMOS Transistor (LCT2) for Pull-Down network
40
Figure 4.9 (c) LCPMOS NOR PMOS_1, PMOS_2: Normal PMOS transistors in Pull-Up network NMOS_1, NMOS_2: Normal NMOS transistors in Pull-Down network PMOS_3: Leakage Control PMOS Transistor (LCT) To verify the designed transistor level schematic and the net list obtained from the schematic correctness, we have gone through the simulation waveforms through the W-EDIT 4.1.2.3 -Input AND-OR-Invert This application of LCPMOS is considered as a reference to section 3.3 of this thesis. As mentioned in section 3.3, the AND-OR-Invert is implemented as SCCG (static CMOS complex gates) instead of considering as gate level. The difference in both can be clearly identified through the two different implementations as shown in Figure 4.10.
41
Figure 4.10 SCCG implementation of AOI Dynamic Power For a 4-input AOI, as there are 16 (i.e., 24) possible input combinations, sixteen input vectors are considered. Therefore to measure the dynamic power of AOI, the average of the power dissipation of all the sixteen input vectors (i.e., (0, 0, 0, 0), (0, 0, 0, 1) (1, 1, 1, 1)) is to be considered. The AOI schematics that are designed through the Tanner S-EDIT for the base case (conventional NOR), LECTOR AOI and LCPMOS AOI are shown in figure 4.11 (a) and figure 4.11 (b) and 4.11(c).
42
43
PMOS_1, PMOS_2, PMOS_3, PMOS_4: Normal PMOS transistors in Pull-Up network NMOS_1, NMOS_2, NMOS_3, NMOS_4: Normal NMOS transistors in Pull-Down network PMOS_5: Leakage Control PMOS Transistor (LCT1) for Pull-Up network NMOS_5: Leakage Control NMOS Transistor (LCT2) for Pull-Down network
44
Figure 4.11 (c) LCPMOS AOI PMOS_1, PMOS_2: Normal PMOS transistors in Pull-Up network NMOS_1, NMOS_2: Normal NMOS transistors in Pull-Down network PMOS_3: Leakage Control PMOS Transistor (LCT) The advantage with SCCG implementation can be observed from Figure 4.10 (c). Irrespective of the number of transistors in the Pull-Up Network and the Pull-Down network, only one transistor i.e., one PMOS (LCT) in Pull-down network and ground is to be added for the LCPMOS case to obtain the leakage reduction. To verify the designed transistor level schematic and the net list obtained from the schematic correctness, we have gone through the simulation waveforms through the W-EDIT.
45
46
CHAPTER-5
LCPMOS Experimental Results
The experimental results for various CMOS circuits are given in this chapter. For all the circuits we considered the results in three cases i. conventional (base case) ii. LECTOR iii. LCPMOS and they are listed in the tables and their corresponding graphs. Y-axis of the graphs in Figure 5.1 to Figure 5.17 represents the POWER DISSIPATED in MICRO WATTs (uW) X-axis of the graphs in Figure 5.1 to Figure 5.17 represents the TECHNOLOGIES i.e. 180nm , 90nm,65nm.
TECHNOLOGY LEAKAGE POWER IN MICRO WATTS(uW) BASE CASE 180nm 90nm 65nm 130 110 98 78 35 5 39 9.3 3.8
%decrease in power
Fig 5.1(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NOT GATE in 180nm technology.
48
Fig 5.1(c): Simulation graph of LCPMOS NOT GATE in 180nm technology. 5.1.3 NOT Gate simulation results for 90nm technology
Fig 5.2(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NOT GATE in 90nm technology.
49
Fig 5.2(c): Simulation graph of LCPMOS NOT GATE in 90nm technology. 5.1.4 NOT Gate simulation results for 65nm technology
50
Fig 5.3(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NOT GATE in 65nm technology.
51
Figure 5.4 Plot of leakage Power for NOT GATE in various technologies
%decrease
%decrease
WATTS(uW) BASE CASE 180nm 90nm 65nm 140 125 115 90 37 75 70 30 12.5
Table 5.2 Results of NAND GATE for various technologies 5.2.1 NAND Gate simulation results for 180nm technology
Fig 5.5(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NAND GATE in 180nm technology.
53
Fig 5.5(c): Simulation graph ofLCPMOS NAND GATE in 180nm technology. 5.2.2 NAND Gate simulation results for 90nm technology
54
Fig 5.6(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NAND GATE in 90nm technology.
55
Fig 5.6(c): Simulation graph ofLCPMOS NAND GATE in 90nm technology. 5.2.3 NAND Gate simulation results for 65nm technology
Fig 5.7(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NAND GATE in 65nm technology.
56
57
160 LEAKAGE POWER IN (uW) 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 180nm 90nm TECHNOLOGY SCALING 65nm BASE CASE LECTOR LCPMOS
Figure 5.8 Plot of leakage Power for NAND in various technologies 5.3 NOR Gate
TECHNOLOGY LEAKAGE POWER IN MICRO WATTS(uW) BASE CASE 180nm 90nm 65nm 98 76 57 33 27 8.2 21 18 7
%decrease in power
Table 5.3 Results of NOR GATE for various technologies 5.3.1 NOR Gate simulation results for 180nm technology
58
Fig 5.9(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NAND GATE in 180nm technology.
59
Fig 5.9(c): Simulation graph of LCPMOS NOR GATE in 180nm technology. 5.3.2 NOR Gate simulation results for 90nm technology
Fig 5.10(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NOR GATE in 90nm technology.
60
Fig 5.10(c): Simulation graph of LCPMOS NOR GATE in 90nm technology. 5.3.3 NOR Gate simulation results for 65nm technology
61
Fig 5.11(a): Simulation graph of BASE CASE NOR GATE in 65nm technology.
62
Fig 5.13 Input output waveforms of AOI 5.4.1 AOI Gate simulation results for 180nm technology
64
Fig 5.14(c) Simulation graph of LCPMOS AOI GATE in 180nm technology. 5.4.2 AOI Gate simulation results for 90nm technology
65
66
Fig 5.15(c) Simulation graph of LCPMOS AOI GATE in 90nm technology. 5.4.3 AOI Gate simulation results for 65nm technology
Fig 5.16(a) Simulation graph of BASE CASE AOI GATE in 65nm technology.
67
68
250 LEAKAGE POWER IN (uW) 200 150 BASE CASE 100 50 0 180nm 90nm TECHNOLOGY SCALING 65nm LECTOR LCPMOS
problem. LCPMOS yields better leakage reduction as the threshold voltage decreases and hence aids in further reduction of supply voltage and minimization of transistor sizes. LCPMOS uses one additional transistor. Compared to other leakage reduction techniques, like LECTOR ,sleepy stack, sleepy keeper, etc, LCPMOS achieves leakage power
reduction but with the advantage of not effecting the dynamic power as this technique does not having any additional control and monitoring circuitry like in sleep techniques and it also maintains exact logic state. The LCPMOS technique can retain logic state, so it can be used for both generic logic circuits as well as memories, i.e., SRAM. When applied to generic logic circuits, the LCPMOS technique achieves up to 85-90% leakage reduction over the conventional circuits without affecting the dynamic power. As technology tends to scale down towards deep sub-micron era i.e., 22nm, 16nm, 12nm etc, there is much necessity of techniques such as LCPMOS which plays a prominent role in decreasing the static power which is the dominant factor in the total power. Methods to decrease the delay which will also be prominent part in the techniques as going down the technology should be investigated; which can be considered as future work.
70
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. H. Narender and R. Nagarajan, LECTOR: A technique for leakage reduction in CMOS circuits, IEEE trans. on VLSI systems, vol. 12, no. 2, Feb. 2004. 2. P. Verma, R. A. Mishra, Leakage power and delay analysis of LECTOR based CMOS circuits, Intl conf. on computer & communication technology ICCCT 2011. 3. L. Wei, K. Roy, V. De, Low voltage low power VLSI design techniques for deep submicron ICs, 13th International Conf., 2000, pp. 24-29. 4. John F. Wakerly, Digital Design- Principles and Practices, fourth edition. 5. M. C. Johnson, D. Somasekhar, L. Y. Chiou, and K. Roy, Leakage control with efficient use of transistor stacks in single threshold CMOS, IEEE Trans. VLSI Syst., vol. 10, pp. 15, Feb. 2002. 6. B. S. Deepaksubramanyan, A. Nunez, Analysis of subthreshold leakage reduction in CMOS digital circuits, in Proc. 13th NASA VLSI Symp.,June 2007. 7. Q. Wang and S. Vrudhula, Static power optimization of deep sub-micron CMOS circuits for dual V technology, in Proc. ICCAD, Apr. 1998, pp. 490496.
71
8. J. C. Park, Sleepy Stack: A new approach to Low Power VLSI logic and memory, Ph.D. Dissertation, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005. 9. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMOS 10. Digital Logic Gates: http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/logic/logic_1.html
72