International Journal Of VLSI Design & Communication Systems ( VLSICS )

NOVEL SLEEP TRANSISTOR TECHNIQUES FOR LOW LEAKAGE POWER PERIPHERAL CIRCUITS

Rajani H.P.1 and Srimannarayan Kulkarni2

1Department of Telecommunication Engineering, KLESs College of Engineering and Technology, Belgaum, India

2Principal, M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, India

ABSTRACT

Static power consumption is a major concern in nanometre technologies. Along with technology scaling down and higher operating speeds of CMOS VLSI circuits, the leakage power is getting enhanced. As process geometries are becoming smaller, device density increases and threshold voltage as well as oxide thickness decrease to keep pace with performance. Two novel circuit techniques for leakage current reduction in inverters with and without state retention property are presented in this work. The power dissipation during inactive (standby) mode of operation can be significantly reduced compared to traditional power gating methods by these circuit techniques. The proposed circuit techniques are applied to inverters and the results are compared with earlier inverter leakage minimization techniques. Inverter buffer chains are designed using new state retention low leakage technique and found to be dissipating lower power with state retention. All low leakage inverters are designed and simulated in cadence design environment using 90 nm technology files. The leakage power during sleep mode is found to be better by X 63 times for novel method. The total power dissipation has also reduced by a factor of X 3.5, compared to earlier sleepy keeper technique. The state retention feature is also good compared to earlier leakage power reduction methodologies.

KEYWORDS

Leakage power, sleep transistor, power gating, average power, state retention