REVIEW OF HIGH-SPEED DIGITAL CMOS CIRCUITS

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the major state-of-the-art high-speed CMOS digital circuits. Focusing in particular on dynamic circuits such as conventional DOMINO, conditionalevaluation DOMINO and contention-free DOMINO. Also some high-performance non-dynamic (static) circuit techniques will be reviewed such as dual-threshold (DVT) circuits. The relative performance of these circuits in terms of speed, power, and noise margins is presented. Also the effects of technology scaling into the deep sub-micron regime on these techniques are evaluated and presented

Energy Efficient Design for Deep Sub-micron CMOS VLSIs

Over the past decade, low power, energy efficient VLSI design has been the focal point of active research and development. The rapid technology scaling, the growing integration capacity, and the mounting active and leakage power dissipation are contributing to the growing complexity of modern VLSI design. Careful power planning on all design levels is required. This dissertation tackles the low-power, low-energy challenges in deep sub-micron technologies on the architecture and circuit levels. Voltage scaling is one of the most efficient ways for reducing power and energy. For ultra-low voltage operation, a new circuit technique which allows bulk CMOS circuits to work in the sub-0. 5V supply territory is presented. The threshold voltage of the slow PMOS transistor is controlled dynamically to get a lower threshold voltage during the active mode. Due to the reduced threshold voltage, switching speed becomes faster while active leakage current is increased. A technique to dynamically manage active leakage current is presented. Energy reduction resulting from using the proposed structure is demonstrated through simulations of different circuits with different levels of complexity. As technology scales, the mounting leakage current and degraded noise immunity impact performance especially that of high performance dynamic circuits. Dual threshold technology shows a good potential for leakage reduction while meeting performance goals. A model for optimally selecting threshold voltages and transistor sizes in wide fan-in dynamic circuits is presented. On the circuit level, a novel circuit level technique which handles the trade-off between noise immunity and energy dissipation for wide fan-in dynamic circuits is presented. Energy efficiency of the proposed wide fan-in dynamic circuit is further enhanced through efficient low voltage operation. Another direct consequence of technology scaling is the growing impact of interconnect parasitics and process variations on performance. Traditionally, worst case process, parasitics, and environmental conditions are considered. Designing for worst case guarantees a fail-safe operation but requires a large delay and voltage margins. This large margin can be recovered if the design can adapt to the actual silicon conditions. Dynamic voltage scaling is considered a key enabler in reducing such margin. An on-chip process identifier to recover the margin required due to process variations is described. The proposed architecture adjusts supply voltage using a hybrid between the one-time voltage setting and the continuous monitoring modes of operation. The interconnect impact on delay is minimized through a novel adaptive voltage scaling architecture. The proposed system recovers the large delay and voltage margins required by conventional systems by closely tracking the actual critical path at anytime. By tracking the actual critical path, the proposed system is robust and more energy efficient compared to both the conventional open-loop and closed-loop systems

Design and Implementation of Novel High Performance Domino Logic

This dissertation presents design and implementation of novel high performance domino logic techniques with increased noise robustness and reduced leakages. The speed and overhead area became the primary parameters of choice for fabrication industry that led to invention of clocked logic styles named as Dynamic logic and Domino logic families. Most importantly, power consumption, noise immunity, speed of operation, area and cost are the predominant parameters for designing any kind of digital logic circuit technique with effective trade-off amongst these parameters depending on the situation and application of design. Because of its high speed and low overhead area domino logic became process of choice for designing of high speed application circuits. The concerning issues are large power consumption and high sensitivity towards noise. Hence, there is a need for designing new domino methodology to meet the requirements by overcoming above mentioned drawbacks which led to ample opportunities for diversified research in this field. Therefore, the outcome of research must be able to handle the primary design parameters efficiently. Besides this, the designed circuit must exhibit high degree of robustness towards noise.In this thesis, few domino logic circuit techniques are proposed to deal with noise and sub-threshold leakages. Effect of signal integrity issues on domino logic techniques is studied. Furthermore, having been subjected to process corner analysis and noise analysis, the overall performance of proposed domino techniques is found to be enhanced despite a few limitations that are mentioned in this work. Besides this, lector based domino and dynamic node stabilized techniques are also proposed and are investigated thoroughly. Simulations show that proposed circuits are showing superior performance. In addition to this, domino based Schmitt triggers with various hysteresis phenomena are designed and simulated. Pre-layout and post-layout simulation results are compared for proposed Schmitt trigger. Simulations reveal that proposed Schmitt trigger techniques are more noise tolerant than CMOS counterparts. Moreover, a test chip for domino based Schmitt trigger is done in UMC 180 nm technology for fabrication

Design and Analysis of Improved Domino Logic with Noise Tolerance and High Performance

The demands of upcoming computing, as well as the challenges of nanometer-era of VLSI design necessitate new digital logic techniques and styles that are at the same time high performance, energy efficient and robust to noise and variation. Dynamic CMOS logic gates are broadly used to design high performance circuits due to their high speed. Conversely, the vital demerit of dynamic logic style is its high noise sensitivity. The main reason for this is the sub-threshold leakage current flowing through the pull down network. With continuous technology scaling, this problem is getting more and more severe. In this thesis, a new noise tolerant dynamic CMOS circuit technique is proposed. In the proposed work, we have enhanced the behavior of the domino CMOS logic. This technique also gets benefit in terms of delay and power. This thesis describes the new low power, noise tolerant and high speed domino logic technique and presents a comparison result of this logic with previously reported schemes. Simulation results prove that, in 180 nm CMOS technology when we used this logic style to realize wide fan-in logic gates, it could achieve maximum level of noise robustness as compared to its basic counterpart. In addition, the logic also works efficiently with sequential circuits. The feasibility of this new technique is demonstrated by means of a real hardware, we have built a custom test-chip in the UMC 180 nm process technology with an ALU core, using the proposed domino logic style for each design block. In this thesis, we have also described the design and implementation of this chip. In addition to this, we have also presented initial power and delay performance comparisons between the circuit level simulated ALU and test-chip implemented in the proposed domino logic style. Finally we conclude that, the thesis contributes a very efficient logic style for wide fan-in gates, which is not only noise robust but also energy efficient and high speed

High-Performance, Energy-Efficient CMOS Arithmetic Circuits

In a modern microprocessor, datapath/arithmetic circuits have always been an important building block in delivering high-performance, energy-efficient computing, because arithmetic operations such as addition and binary number comparison are two of the most commonly used computing instructions. Besides the manufacturing CMOS process, the two most critical design considerations for arithmetic circuits are the logic style and micro-architecture. In this thesis, a constant-delay (CD) logic style is proposed targeting full-custom high-speed applications. The constant delay characteristic of this logic style (regardless of the logic type) makes it suitable for implementing complicated logic expressions such as addition. CD logic exhibits a unique characteristic where the output is pre-evaluated before the inputs from the preceding stage are ready. This feature enables a performance advantage over static and dynamic domino logic styles in a single cycle, multi-stage circuit block. Several design considerations including timing window width adjustment and clock distribution are discussed. Using a 65-nm general-purpose CMOS technology, the proposed logic style demonstrates an average speedup of 94% and 56% over static and dynamic domino logic, respectively, in five different logic gates. Simulation results of 8-bit ripple carry adders conclude that CD logic is 39% and 23% faster than the static and dynamic-based adders, respectively. CD logic also demonstrates 39% speedup and 64% (22%) energy-delay product reduction from static logic at 100% (10%) data activity in 32-bit carry lookahead adders. To confirm CD logic's potential, a 148 ps, single-cycle 64-bit adder with CD logic implemented in the critical path is fabricated in a 65-nm, 1-V CMOS process. A new 64-bit Ling adder micro-architecture, which utilizes both inversion and absorption properties to minimize the number of CD logic and the number of logic stage in the critical path, is also proposed. At 1-V supply, this adder's measured worst-case power and leakage power are 135 mW and 0.22 mW, respectively. A single-cycle 64-bit binary comparator utilizing a radix-2 tree structure is also proposed. This comparator architecture is specifically designed for static logic to achieve both low-power and high-performance operation, especially in low input data activity environments. At 65-nm technology with 25% (10%) data activity, the proposed design demonstrates 2.3x (3.5x) and 3.7x (5.8x) power and energy-delay product efficiency, respectively. This comparator is also 2.7x faster at iso-energy (80 fJ) or 3.3x more energy-efficient at iso-delay (200 ps) than existing designs. An improved comparator, where CD logic is utilized in the critical path to achieve high performance without sacrificing the overall energy efficiency, is also realized in a 65-nm 1-V CMOS process. At 1-V supply, the proposed comparator's measured delay is 167 ps, and has an average power and a leakage power of 2.34 mW and 0.06 mW, respectively. At 0.3-pJ iso-energy or 250-ps iso-delay budget, the proposed comparator with CD logic is 20% faster or 17% more energy-efficient compared to a comparator implemented with just the static logic

Study of Layout Techniques in Dynamic Logic Circuitry for Single Event Effect Mitigation

Dynamic logic circuits are highly suitable for high-speed applications, considering the fact that they have a smaller area and faster transition. However, their application in space or other radiation-rich environments has been significantly inhibited by their susceptibility to radiation effects. This work begins with the basic operations of dynamic logic circuits, elaborates upon the physics underlying their radiation vulnerability, and evaluates three techniques that harden dynamic logic from the layout: drain extension, pulse quenching, and a proposed method. The drain extension method adds an extra drain to the sensitive node in order to improve charge sharing, the pulse quenching scheme utilizes charge sharing by duplicating a component that offsets the transient pulse, and the proposed technique takes advantage of both. Domino buffers designed using these three techniques, along with a conventional design as reference, were modeled and simulated using a 3D TCAD tool. Simulation results confirm a significant reduction of soft error rate in the proposed technique and suggest a greater reduction with angled incidence. A 130 nm chip containing designed buffer and register chains was fabricated and tested with heavy ion irradiation. According to the experiment results, the proposed design achieved 30% soft error rate reduction, with 19%, 20%, and 10% overhead in speed, power, and area, respectively

Advanced microarchitecture and circuit design techniques for on-chip memories in CMOS technology

In modern on-chip memories, an increasing demand for higher performance, lower power, reduced area, and improved robustness creates a rising need for advanced microarchitecture and circuit design techniques. Particularly in large-signal multi-ported register files, these advanced design techniques include: (i) multi-banked arrays, (ii) multi-frequency arrays, (iii) multi-bit width gating, (iv) multi-latency cycle times, (v) multi-threshold devices, and (vi) multi-strength keepers. In modern microprocessors, register files are important ingredients, but the increasing number of register file read/write ports and entries can produce a bottleneck. This thesis discusses various new techniques, to address the challenges facing register file designers, and to satisfy microprocessor requirements. The scalability of register files is a concern in modern microprocessors. As microprocessors become wider to exploit instruction level parallelism, this increases the amount of read/write ports. In turn this results in quadratic growth in register file area, decreasing frequency and increasing the power consumption. Multi-banked and multi-frequency register files reduce area and power consumption by relieving the read/write port congestion. Multi-bit width register files reduce active power during read/write operations by gating the clock/wordline. Pipelined register files improve frequency by reducing logic depth, but require multiple cycles for read/write operations. Multi-latency register files contain variable access cycle times, which are dependent on the physical locality of the data. This improves overall microprocessor performance and recovers lost instructions per cycle. As instruction window size continues to expand in modern microprocessors, the resulting demand for additional register file entries requires increased use of wide-OR dynamic circuits. However, these circuits, primarily found in local/global bitlines, are susceptible to leakage noise. In a multi-threshold process, a self-reverse bias technique exploits the use of leaky low-VTH devices, reducing bitline leakage and improving robustness. This circuit topology improves bitline delay from reduced keeper contention. Downsized keepers improve bitline delay in low leakage conditions; stronger keepers improve bitline robustness in high leakage conditions. Utilizing this concept, register files with multi-strength keepers enable robust operation across a wide range of process, voltage, and temperature. These various design techniques show excellent promise in improving performance, power, area, and robustness of multi-ported register files in modern microprocessors

Digital-Based Analog Processing in Nanoscale CMOS ICs for IoT Applications

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