1,450 research outputs found
Addressing On-Chip Power Conversion and Dissipation Issues in Many-Core System-on-a-Chip based on Conventional Silicon and Emerging Nanotechnologies
Title from PDF of title page viewed August 27, 2018Dissertation advisor: Masud H ChowdhuryVitaIncludes bibliographical references (pages 158-163)Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Computing and Engineering and Department of Physics and Astronomy. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2017Integrated circuits (ICs) are moving towards system-on-a-chip (SOC) designs. SOC
allows various small and large electronic systems to be implemented in a single chip. This
approach enables the miniaturization of design blocks that leads to high density transistor
integration, faster response time, and lower fabrication costs. To reap the benefits of SOC
and uphold the miniaturization of transistors, innovative power delivery and power
dissipation management schemes are paramount. This dissertation focuses on on-chip
integration of power delivery systems and managing power dissipation to increase the
lifetime of energy storage elements. We explore this problem from two different angels:
On-chip voltage regulators and power gating techniques. On-chip voltage regulators reduce
parasitic effects, and allow faster and efficient power delivery for microprocessors. Power
gating techniques, on the other hand, reduce the power loss incurred by circuit blocks
during standby mode.
Power dissipation (Ptotal = Pstatic and Pdynamic) in a complementary metal-oxide
semiconductor (CMOS) circuit comes from two sources: static and dynamic. A quadratic
dependency on the dynamic switching power and a more than linear dependency on static
power as a form of gate leakage (subthreshold current) exist. To reduce dynamic power
loss, the supply power should be reduced. A significant reduction in power dissipation
occurs when portions of a microprocessor operate at a lower voltage level. This reduction
in supply voltage is achieved via voltage regulators or converters. Voltage regulators are
used to provide a stable power supply to the microprocessor. The conventional off-chip
switching voltage regulator contains a passive floating inductor, which is difficult to be
implemented inside the chip due to excessive power dissipation and parasitic effects.
Additionally, the inductor takes a very large chip area while hampering the scaling process.
These limitations make passive inductor based on-chip regulator design very unattractive
for SOC integration and multi-/many-core environments. To circumvent the challenges,
three alternative techniques based on active circuit elements to replace the passive LC filter
of the buck convertor are developed. The first inductorless on-chip switching voltage
regulator architecture is based on a cascaded 2nd order multiple feedback (MFB) low-pass
filter (LPF). This design has the ability to modulate to multiple voltage settings via pulse
with modulation (PWM). The second approach is a supplementary design utilizing a hybrid
low drop-out scheme to lower the output ripple of the switching regulator over a wider
frequency range. The third design approach allows the integration of an entire power
management system within a single chipset by combining a highly efficient switching
regulator with an intermittently efficient linear regulator (area efficient), for robust and
highly efficient on-chip regulation.
The static power (Pstatic) or subthreshold leakage power (Pleak) increases with
technology scaling. To mitigate static power dissipation, power gating techniques are
implemented. Power gating is one of the popular methods to manage leakage power during
standby periods in low-power high-speed IC design. It works by using transistor based
switches to shut down part of the circuit block and put them in the idle mode. The efficiency
of a power gating scheme involves minimum Ioff and high Ion for the sleep transistor. A
conventional sleep transistor circuit design requires an additional header, footer, or both
switches to turn off the logic block. This additional transistor causes signal delay and
increases the chip area. We propose two innovative designs for next generation sleep
transistor designs. For an above threshold operation, we present a sleep transistor design
based on fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) device. For a subthreshold circuit
operation, we implement a sleep transistor utilizing the newly developed silicon-on
ferroelectric-insulator field effect transistor (SOFFET). In both of the designs, the ability
to control the threshold voltage via bias voltage at the back gate makes both devices more
flexible for sleep transistors design than a bulk MOSFET. The proposed approaches
simplify the design complexity, reduce the chip area, eliminate the voltage drop by sleep
transistor, and improve power dissipation. In addition, the design provides a dynamically
controlled Vt for times when the circuit needs to be in a sleep or switching mode.Introduction -- Background and literature review -- Fully integrated on-chip switching voltage regulator -- Hybrid LDO voltage regulator based on cascaded second order multiple feedback loop -- Single and dual output two-stage on-chip power management system -- Sleep transistor design using double-gate FDSOI -- Subthreshold region sleep transistor design -- Conclusio
Modeling Emerging Semiconductor Devices for Circuit Simulation
Circuit simulation is an indispensable part of modern IC design. The significant cost of fabrication has driven researchers to verify the chip functionality through simulation before submitting the design for final fabrication. With the impending end of Moore’s Law, researchers all over the world are looking for new devices with enhanced functionality. A plethora of promising emerging devices has been proposed in recent years. In order to leverage the full potential of such devices, circuit designers need fast, reliable models for SPICE simulation to explore different applications. Most of these new devices have complex underlying physical mechanism rendering the model development an extremely challenging task. For the models to be of practical use, they have to enable fast and accurate simulation that rules out the possibility of numerically solving a system of partial differential equations to arrive at a solution. In this chapter, we show how different modeling approaches can be used to simulate three emerging semiconductor devices namely, silicon- on- insulator four gate transistor(G4FET), perimeter gated single photon avalanche diode (PG-SPAD) and insulator-metal transistor (IMT) device with volatile memristance. All the models have been verified against experimental /TCAD data and implemented in commercial circuit simulator
A review of advances in pixel detectors for experiments with high rate and radiation
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments ATLAS and CMS have established
hybrid pixel detectors as the instrument of choice for particle tracking and
vertexing in high rate and radiation environments, as they operate close to the
LHC interaction points. With the High Luminosity-LHC upgrade now in sight, for
which the tracking detectors will be completely replaced, new generations of
pixel detectors are being devised. They have to address enormous challenges in
terms of data throughput and radiation levels, ionizing and non-ionizing, that
harm the sensing and readout parts of pixel detectors alike. Advances in
microelectronics and microprocessing technologies now enable large scale
detector designs with unprecedented performance in measurement precision (space
and time), radiation hard sensors and readout chips, hybridization techniques,
lightweight supports, and fully monolithic approaches to meet these challenges.
This paper reviews the world-wide effort on these developments.Comment: 84 pages with 46 figures. Review article.For submission to Rep. Prog.
Phy
New approach for SOI pixel sensor:analysis and implementation
Silicon on Insulator (SOI) is an interesting alternative to bulk silicon for the fabrication of integrated circuits due to its advantages with respect to the junction leakage, low switching noise coupling, high temperature immunity, low voltage and low power applications. Recently, SOI transistors have also been used in high speed CPU's due to their high switching performances and their reduced power consumption. Another application where high performances and even higher densities are needed are dynamic memories (DRAM) where floating body SOI MOSFETS were used as an 1T memory node. Using the floating body as a charge storage reduces the unit cell size and drastically increases the bit density and the storage capacity. However, despite technical advances in SOI technology, it has rarely been exploited in optical sensing and imagery. The main reasons are the expected low optical conversion efficiency due to the relatively thin silicon film thicknesses, well below 1 µm and the slow time constants due to slow recombinations at the junctions. In addition, the slim active region reduces the optical bandwidth of such sensors as longer wavelengths are absorbed deeper (and in the case of SOI probably in the buried oxide layer). Despite these major handicaps, it was shown recently that an SOI MOSFET based phototransistor could detect light intensities as low as 5 mW/m2. However, previous work addressed only low light intensities neglecting the slow transients drawbacks. Moreover, as for most fully and partially depleted SOI MOSFET's based photodetectors, it is the drain current variation due to light absorption that was used as a measure of photon densities (for instance the 5 mW/m2 generates 50 fA of photocurrent). Such variations are hard to measure with the needed resolution as such currents are close to the noise levels of any amplifier. This research project proposes a new measurement technique that does not rely on direct quantification of the photocurrent and hence overcomes the problems inherent to noise and low current variations. In addition to that, this novel technique solves the problem of slow drain current recovery time inherent to the slow recombinations at the junctions. This technique relies on the transient charge pumping used to remove continuously photogenerated charges from the electrically insulated body of the MOSFET. Then, since the transistor is always maintained in equilibrium conditions, this approach will get rid of any transient effect occurring in the partially depleted SOI MOSFET. Also presented in this work is an extension of this technique to any floating body MOSFET. We presented also measurement of bulk P-MOSFET whose n-well was left floating and showed that the behaviour was similar to that of a floating body SOI MOSFET. Still using the transient charge pumping to remove extra charge from the floating n-well. Finally, An SOI circuit implementation of this technique was presented. This circuit takes advantage of some of the properties of the floating body SOI MOSFET to implement a first order delta sigma modulator at the pixel level without substantially reducing the fill factor. The first order delta sigma modulator in each pixel, can improve the resolution and offer a direct digital output without the need of an ADC
MODELING AND SPICE IMPLEMENTATION OF SILICON-ON-INSULATOR (SOI) FOUR GATE (G4FET) TRANSISTOR
As the device dimensions have reduced from micrometer to nanometer range, new bulk silicon devices are now facing many undesirable effects of scaling leading device engineers to look for new process technologies. Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) has emerged as a very promising candidate for resolving the major problems plaguing the bulk silicon technology. G4FET [G4FET] is a SOI transistor with four independent gates. Although G4FET has already shown great potential in different applications, the widespread adoption of a technology in circuit design is heavily dependent upon good SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) models. CAD (Computer Aided Design) tools are now ubiquitous in circuit design and a fast, robust and accurate SPICE model is absolutely necessary to transform G4FET into a mainstream technology.
The research goal is to develop suitable SPICE models for G4FET to aid circuit designers in designing innovative analog and digital circuits using this new transistor. The first phase of this work is numerical modeling of the G4FET where four different numerical techniques are implemented, each with its merits and demerits. The first two methods are based on multivariate Lagrange interpolation and multidimensional Bernstein polynomial. The third numerical technique is based on multivariate regression polynomial to aid modeling with dense gridded data. Another suitable alternative namely multidimensional linear and cubic spline interpolation is explored as the fourth numerical modeling approach to solve some of the problems resulting from single polynomial approximation.
The next phase of modeling involves developing a macromodel combining already existing SPICE models of MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) and JFET (junction-gate field-effect transistor). This model is easy to implement in circuit simulators and provides good results compared to already demonstrated experimental works with innovative G4FET circuits. The final phase of this work involves the development of a physics-based compact model of G4FET with some empirical fitting parameters. A model for depletion-all-around operation is implemented in circuit simulator based on previous work. Another simplified model, combining MOS and JFET action, is implemented in circuit simulator to model the accumulation mode operation of G4FET
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