Robust low-power digital circuit design in nano-CMOS technologies

Azam, Touqeer (2011) Robust low-power digital circuit design in nano-CMOS technologies. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

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Abstract

Device scaling has resulted in large scale integrated, high performance, low-power, and low cost systems. However the move towards sub-100 nm technology nodes has increased variability in device characteristics due to large process variations. Variability has severe implications on digital circuit design by causing timing uncertainties in combinational circuits, degrading yield and reliability of memory elements, and increasing power density due to slow scaling of supply voltage. Conventional design methods add large pessimistic safety margins to mitigate increased variability, however, they incur large power and performance loss as the combination of worst cases occurs very rarely.

In-situ monitoring of timing failures provides an opportunity to dynamically tune safety margins in proportion to on-chip variability that can significantly minimize power and performance losses. We demonstrated by simulations two delay sensor designs to detect timing failures in advance that can be coupled with different compensation techniques such as voltage scaling, body biasing, or frequency scaling to avoid actual timing failures. Our simulation results using 45 nm and 32 nm technology BSIM4 models indicate significant reduction in total power consumption under temperature and statistical variations. Future work involves using dual sensing to avoid useless voltage scaling that incurs a speed loss.

SRAM cache is the first victim of increased process variations that requires handcrafted design to meet area, power, and performance requirements. We have proposed novel 6 transistors (6T), 7 transistors (7T), and 8 transistors (8T)-SRAM cells that enable variability tolerant and low-power SRAM cache designs. Increased sense-amplifier offset voltage due to device mismatch arising from high variability increases delay and power consumption of SRAM design. We have proposed two novel design techniques to reduce offset voltage dependent delays providing a high speed low-power SRAM design. Increasing leakage currents in nano-CMOS technologies pose a major challenge to a low-power reliable design. We have investigated novel segmented supply voltage architecture to reduce leakage power of the SRAM caches since they occupy bulk of the total chip area and power. Future work involves developing leakage reduction methods for the combination logic designs including SRAM peripherals.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Qualification Level: Doctoral
Keywords: Variability, in-situ design, SRAM, SNM, WNM, pre-charge select, discharge assist, robustness
Subjects: Q Science > QC Physics
T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering
Supervisor's Name: Cumming, Prof. David
Date of Award: 2011
Depositing User: Mr Touqeer Azam
Unique ID: glathesis:2011-2512
Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
Date Deposited: 21 Apr 2011
Last Modified: 10 Dec 2012 13:56
URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/2512

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