Chapter 5

Inverter Characteristics
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• Power and Area Considerations
• In addition to these concerns, we can identify two other issues that play
significant roles in inverter design: power consumption and the chip area
occupied by the inverter circuit.
• The DC power dissipation of an inverter circuit can be calculated as the
product of its power supply voltage and the amount of current drawn from
the power supply during steady state.
• It is seen that the power consumption increases significantly as the value
of the load resistor RL is decreased, and the (WIL) ratio is increased. If
lowering the DC power consumption is the overriding concern, we may
choose a small (WIL) ratio and a large load resistor. On the other hand, if
the fabrication of the large load resistor requires a large silicon area, a
clear trade-off exists between the DC power dissipation and the area
occupied by the inverter circuit.
• The chip area occupied by the resistive-load inverter circuit depends on
two parameters, the (WIL) ratio of the driver transistor and the value of
the resistor RL. The area of the driver transistor can be approximated by
the gate area, (Wx L). Assuming that the gate length L is kept at its
smallest possible value for the given technology, the gate area will be
proportional to the (WIL) ratio of the transistor. The resistor area, on the
other hand, depends very strongly on the technology which is used to
fabricate the resistor on the chip.