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21 - Principles for ultra-low-power digital design

from Section V - Principles for ultra-low-power analog and digital design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2010

Rahul Sarpeshkar
Rahul Sarpeshkar
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Summary

A small leak will sink a great ship.

Benjamin Franklin

In this chapter, we shall review important principles for ultra-low-power digital circuit and system design. We shall focus on operation with extremely low power-supply voltages and on subthreshold operation, although we shall provide some analysis of moderate-inversion and strong-inversion operation with the EKV model as well. As Chapter 6 on deep submicron effects in transistors discussed, because threshold voltages scale significantly less strongly than power-supply voltages, subthreshold operation is an increasingly dominant fraction of the voltage operating range. Subthreshold operation has become and will continue to get increasingly fast such that ultra-low-power operation in this regime does not sacrifice bandwidth in many applications. In biomedical and bioelectronic applications, subthreshold operation is ideal since bandwidth requirements are typically modest while energy efficiency is of paramount importance. An insightful paper by Meindl, that was way ahead of its time, pioneered subthreshold digital design. An analysis by Burr and Peterson analyzed the optimal energy efficiency of ultra-low-power subthreshold circuits. A more recent publication by Vittoz, the pioneer of subthreshold analog design, has analyzed issues in subthreshold digital design using his EKV model. Through such pioneering and other work, subthreshold digital design has been revived and is an active field of research in several academic and industrial institutions.

We shall begin by discussing the operation of a subthreshold CMOS inverter. Operation in the subthreshold regime is highly subject to transistor mismatch.

Type
Chapter
Information
Ultra Low Power Bioelectronics
Fundamentals, Biomedical Applications, and Bio-Inspired Systems
 , pp. 617 - 650
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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