Low Power VLSI Circuit Design with Fine-Grain Voltage Engineering

In order to cope with the increasing leakage power and the increasing device variability in VLSI’s, the required control size of both the space-domain and the time-domain is decreasing. This paper shows the several recent fine-grain voltage engineerings for the low power VLSI circuit design. The space-domain fine-grain voltage engineering includes the fine-grain power supply voltage with 3D-structured on-chip buck converters with the maximum power efficiency up to 71.3% in 0.35-μm CMOS and the fine-grain body bias control to reduce power supply voltage in 90-nm CMOS. The time-domain fine-grain voltage engineering includes accelerators for the power supply voltage hopping with a 5-ns transition time in 0.18-μm CMOS, the power supply noise canceller with the 32% power supply noise reduction in 90-nm CMOS, and backgate bias accelerators for fast wake-up with 1.5-V change of backgate voltage in 35 ns in 90-nm CMOS.