Lecture 7:

Power
 Outline
 Power and Energy
 Dynamic Power
 Static Power

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 2

 Power and Energy
 Power is drawn from a voltage source attached to
the VDD pin(s) of a chip.

 Instantaneous Power: P (t )  I (t )V (t )
T
 Energy: E   P (t )dt
0
T
E 1
 Average Power: Pavg    P (t )dt
T T 0

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 3

 Power in Circuit Elements
PVDD  t   I DD  t  VDD

VR2  t 
PR  t    I R2  t  R
R

 
dV
EC   I  t V  t  dt   C V  t  dt
0 0
dt
VC

 C  V  t  dV  12 CVC2
0

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 4

 Charging a Capacitor
 When the gate output rises
– Energy stored in capacitor is
EC  12 CLVDD
2

– But energy drawn from the supply is

 
dV
EVDD   I  t VDD dt   C L VDD dt
0 0
dt
VDD

 CLVDD  dV  C V
2
L DD
0

– Half the energy from VDD is dissipated in the pMOS

transistor as heat, other half stored in capacitor
 When the gate output falls
– Energy in capacitor is dumped to GND
– Dissipated as heat in the nMOS transistor

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 5

 Switching Waveforms
 Example: VDD = 1.0 V, CL = 150 fF, f = 1 GHz

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 6

 Switching Power
T
1
Pswitching   iDD (t )VDD dt
T 0
T
VDD

T 0 iDD (t )dt

VDD
  Tfsw CVDD  VDD
T iDD(t)
fsw

 CVDD 2 f sw
C

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 7

 Activity Factor
 Suppose the system clock frequency = f
 Let fsw = f, where  = activity factor
– If the signal is a clock,  = 1
– If the signal switches once per cycle,  = ½

 Dynamic power:
Pswitching   CVDD 2 f

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 8

 Short Circuit Current
 When transistors switch, both nMOS and pMOS
networks may be momentarily ON at once
 Leads to a blip of “short circuit” current.
 < 10% of dynamic power if rise/fall times are
comparable for input and output
 We will generally ignore this component

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 9

Power Dissipation Sources
 Ptotal = Pdynamic + Pstatic
 Dynamic power: Pdynamic = Pswitching + Pshortcircuit
– Switching load capacitances
– Short-circuit current
 Static power: Pstatic = (Isub + Igate + Ijunct + Icontention)VDD
– Subthreshold leakage
– Gate leakage
– Junction leakage
– Contention current

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 10

Dynamic Power Example
 1 billion transistor chip
– 50M logic transistors
• Average width: 12 
• Activity factor = 0.1
– 950M memory transistors
• Average width: 4 
• Activity factor = 0.02
– 1.0 V 65 nm process
– C = 1 fF/m (gate) + 0.8 fF/m (diffusion)
 Estimate dynamic power consumption @ 1 GHz.
Neglect wire capacitance and short-circuit current.

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 11

 Solution
Clogic   50 106   12   0.025 m /    1.8 fF /  m   27 nF
Cmem   950 106   4   0.025 m /    1.8 fF /  m   171 nF

Pdynamic  0.1Clogic  0.02Cmem   1.0   1.0 GHz   6.1 W

2

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 12

 Dynamic Power Reduction

P
 switching   CV 2
DD f

 Try to minimize:
– Activity factor
– Capacitance
– Supply voltage
– Frequency

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 13

 Activity Factor Estimation
 Let Pi = Prob(node i = 1)
– Pi = 1-Pi
 i = Pi * Pi
 Completely random data has P = 0.5 and  = 0.25
 Data is often not completely random
– e.g. upper bits of 64-bit words representing bank
account balances are usually 0
 Data propagating through ANDs and ORs has lower
activity factor
– Depends on design, but typically  ≈ 0.1

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 14

 Switching Probability

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 15

 Example
 A 4-input AND is built out of two levels of gates
 Estimate the activity factor at each node if the inputs
have P = 0.5

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 16

 Clock Gating
 The best way to reduce the activity is to turn off the
clock to registers in unused blocks
– Saves clock activity ( = 1)
– Eliminates all switching activity in the block
– Requires determining if block will be used

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 17

 Capacitance
 Gate capacitance
– Fewer stages of logic
– Small gate sizes
 Wire capacitance
– Good floorplanning to keep communicating
blocks close to each other
– Drive long wires with inverters or buffers rather
than complex gates

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 18

 Voltage / Frequency
 Run each block at the lowest possible voltage and
frequency that meets performance requirements
 Voltage Domains
– Provide separate supplies to different blocks
– Level converters required when crossing
from low to high VDD domains

 Dynamic Voltage Scaling

– Adjust VDD and f according to
workload

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 19

 Static Power
 Static power is consumed even when chip is
quiescent.
– Leakage draws power from nominally OFF
devices
– Ratioed circuits burn power in fight between ON
transistors

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 20

 Static Power Example
 Revisit power estimation for 1 billion transistor chip
 Estimate static power consumption
– Subthreshold leakage
• Normal Vt: 100 nA/m
• High Vt: 10 nA/m
• High Vt used in all memories and in 95% of
logic gates
– Gate leakage 5 nA/m
– Junction leakage negligible

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 21

 Solution
Wnormal-Vt   50 106   12   0.025 m /    0.05   0.75 106  m

Whigh-Vt   50 106   12   0.95    950 106   4    0.025 m /    109.25 106  m

I sub  Wnormal-Vt 100 nA/ m+Whigh-Vt 10 nA/ m  / 2  584 mA

 
I gate   Wnormal-Vt  Whigh-Vt  5 nA/ m  / 2  275 mA
 
Pstatic   584 mA  275 mA   1.0 V   859 mW

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 22

 Subthreshold Leakage
 For Vds > 50 mV Typical values in 65 nm
Vgs   Vds VDD   k Vsb Ioff = 100 nA/m @ Vt = 0.3 V
I sub  I off 10 S
Ioff = 10 nA/m @ Vt = 0.4 V
Ioff = 1 nA/m @ Vt = 0.5 V
 Ioff = leakage at Vgs = 0, Vds = VDD  = 0.1
k = 0.1
S = 100 mV/decade

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 23

 Stack Effect
 Series OFF transistors have less leakage
– Vx > 0, so N2 has negative Vgs

  Vx VDD  Vx    VDD Vx  VDD   k Vx

I sub  I off 10  I off 10

S S
              
N1 N2

VDD
Vx 
1  2  k
 1  k 
VDD  
 1 2  k  VDD
 
I sub  I off 10 S
 I off 10 S

– Leakage through 2-stack reduces ~10x

– Leakage through 3-stack reduces further

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 24

 Leakage Control
 Leakage and delay trade off
– Aim for low leakage in sleep and low delay in
active mode
 To reduce leakage:
– Increase Vt: multiple Vt
• Use low Vt only in critical circuits
– Increase Vs: stack effect
• Input vector control in sleep
– Decrease Vb
• Reverse body bias in sleep
• Or forward body bias in active mode

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 25

 Gate Leakage
 Extremely strong function of tox and Vgs
– Negligible for older processes
– Approaches subthreshold leakage at 65 nm and
below in some processes
 An order of magnitude less for pMOS than nMOS
 Control leakage in the process using tox > 10.5 Å
– High-k gate dielectrics help
– Some processes provide multiple tox
• e.g. thicker oxide for 3.3 V I/O transistors
 Control leakage in circuits by limiting VDD

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 26

 NAND3 Leakage Example
 100 nm process
Ign = 6.3 nA Igp = 0
Ioffn = 5.63 nA Ioffp = 9.3 nA

Data from [Lee03]

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 27

 Junction Leakage
 From reverse-biased p-n junctions
– Between diffusion and substrate or well
 Ordinary diode leakage is negligible
 Band-to-band tunneling (BTBT) can be significant
– Especially in high-Vt transistors where other
leakage is small
– Worst at Vdb = VDD
 Gate-induced drain leakage (GIDL) exacerbates
– Worst for Vgd = -VDD (or more negative)

7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 28

 Power Gating
 Turn OFF power to blocks when they are idle to
save leakage
– Use virtual VDD (VDDV)
– Gate outputs to prevent
invalid logic levels to next block

 Voltage drop across sleep transistor degrades

performance during normal operation
– Size the transistor wide enough to minimize
impact
 Switching wide sleep transistor costs dynamic power
– Only justified when circuit sleeps long enough
7: Power CMOS VLSI Design 4th Ed. 29