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Energy optimal sizing of FinFET standard cells operating in multiple voltage regimes using adaptive independent gate control

Published: 20 May 2014 Publication History

Abstract

FinFET has been proposed as an alternative for bulk CMOS in the ultra-low power designs due to its more effective channel control, reduced random dopant fluctuation, higher ON/OFF current ratio, lower energy consumption, etc. The characteristics of FinFETs operating in the sub/near-threshold region are very different from those in the strong-inversion region. This paper introduces an analytical transregional FinFET model with high accuracy in both subthrehold and near-threshold regions. The unique feature of independent gate controls for FinFET devices is exploited for achieving a tradeoff between energy consumption and delay, and balancing the rise and fall times of FinFET gates. This paper proposes an effective design framework of FinFET standard cells based on the adaptive independent gate control method such that they can operate properly at all of subthreshold, near-threshold and super-threshold regions. The optimal voltage for independent gate control is derived so as to achieve equal rise and fall times or minimal energy-delay product at any supply voltage level.

References

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T. Sairam, W. Zhao, and Y. Cao, "Optimizing FinFET technology for high-speed and low-power design", in Proc. of Great Lakes Symp. VLSI, 2007.
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F. Crupi, M. Alioto, J. Franco, P. Magnone, M. Togo, N. Horiguchi, and G. Groeseneken, "Understanding the basic advantages of bulk FinFETs for sub- and near-threshold logic circuits from device measurements," IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems II, vol. 59, no. 7, July 2012.
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T. Cakici, K. Kim, and K. Roy, "FinFET based SRAM design for low standby power applications," ISQED, 2007.
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A. Muttreja, N. Agarwal, and N. K. Jha, "CMOS logic design with independent gate FinFETs," in Proc. Intl. Symp. Computer Design, vol. 20, pp. 560--567, 2007.
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B. H. Calhoun, A. Wang, N. Verma, and A. Chandrakasan, "Sub-threshold design: the challenges of minimizing circuit energy," ISLPED, 2006.
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  1. Energy optimal sizing of FinFET standard cells operating in multiple voltage regimes using adaptive independent gate control

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      GLSVLSI '14: Proceedings of the 24th edition of the great lakes symposium on VLSI
      May 2014
      376 pages
      ISBN:9781450328166
      DOI:10.1145/2591513
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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      Published: 20 May 2014

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      Author Tags

      1. FinFET
      2. independent gate control
      3. near-threshold

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      GLSVLSI '14: Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI 2014
      May 21 - 23, 2014
      Texas, Houston, USA

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