Leakage Current: Moore’S Law Meets Static Power

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Leakage Current: Moore’S Law Meets Static Power COVER FEATURE Leakage Current: Moore’s Law Meets Static Power Microprocessor design has traditionally focused on dynamic power consumption as a limiting factor in system integration. As feature sizes shrink below 0.1 micron, static power is posing new low-power design challenges. Nam Sung ower consumption is now the major tech- power. However, the power they consume has Kim nical problem facing the semiconductor increased dramatically with increases in device Todd Austin industry. In comments on this problem at speed and chip density. the 2002 International Electron Devices The research community has recognized the sig- David P Meeting, Intel chairman Andrew Grove nificance of this increase for some time. Figure 1 Blaauw cited off-state current leakage in particular as a lim- shows total chip dynamic and static power con- Trevor iting factor in future microprocessor integration.1 sumption trends based on 2002 statistics normal- Off-state leakage is static power, current that ized to the 2001 International Technology Road- Mudge 2 University of leaks through transistors even when they are turned map for Semiconductors. The ITRS projects a Michigan, off. It is one of two principal sources of power dis- decrease in dynamic power per device over time. Ann Arbor sipation in today’s microprocessors. The other is However, if we assume a doubling of on-chip dynamic power, which arises from the repeated devices every two years, total dynamic power will Krisztián capacitance charge and discharge on the output of increase on a per-chip basis. Packaging and cooling Flautner the hundreds of millions of gates in today’s chips. costs as well as the limited power capacity of bat- ARM Ltd. Until very recently, only dynamic power has been teries make this trend unsustainable. a significant source of power consumption, and Figure 1 also shows exponential increases pro- Jie S. Hu Moore’s law has helped to control it. Shrinking jected for the two principal components of static processor technology has allowed and, below 100 power consumption: Mary Jane nanometers, actually required reducing the supply Irwin voltage. Dynamic power is proportional to the • subthreshold leakage, a weak inversion current Mahmut square of supply voltage, so reducing the voltage across the device; and Kandemir significantly reduces power consumption. • gate leakage, a tunneling current through the Unfortunately, smaller geometries exacerbate leak- gate oxide insulation. Vijaykrishnan age, so static power begins to dominate the power Narayanan consumption equation in microprocessor design. The ITRS expects the rate of these increases to level Pennsylvania State out in 2005 but to remain substantial nonetheless. University PROCESS TRENDS Even today, total power dissipation from chip leak- Historically, complementary metal-oxide semi- age is approaching the total from dynamic power, conductor technology has dissipated much less and the projected increases in off-state subthreshold power than earlier technologies such as transistor- leakage show it exceeding total dynamic power transistor and emitter-coupled logic. In fact, when consumption as technology drops below the 65-nm not switching, CMOS transistors lost negligible feature size. 68 Computer Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/03/$17.00 © 2003 IEEE 100 300 Gate length 250 1 Dynamic If they reach mainstream production, emerging power 200 techniques to moderate the gate-oxide tunneling effect—primarily by using high-k dielectrics to bet- Possible trajectory ter insulate the gate from the channel—could bring 0.01 if high-k dielectrics 150 gate leakage under control by 2010. reach mainstream Sub- production As leakage current becomes the major contribu- threshold tor to power consumption, the industry must leakage 100 Physical gate length (nm) reconsider the power equation that limits system 0.0001 performance, chip size, and cost. 50 Normalized total chip power dissipation Gate-oxide POWER BASICS leakage Five equations model the power-performance 0.0000001 0 19901995 20002005 2010 2015 2020 tradeoffs for CMOS logic circuits. We present them here in simplifications that capture the basics for logic designers, architects, and system builders. The first Figure 1. Total chip three are common in the low-power literature.3 The 0.5) will reduce the operating frequency by more dynamic and static last two model subthreshold and gate-oxide leakage. than half (fnorm ≈ 0.3). power dissipation Operating frequency and voltage Overall power consumption trends based on the International The first relation shows the dependency of oper- The third equation defines overall power con- Technology ating frequency on supply voltage: sumption as the sum of dynamic and static power: Roadmap for α 2 Semiconductors. f ∝ (V − Vth) / V (1) P = ACV f + VIleak (3) The two power plots for static power where V is the transistor’s supply voltage, Vth is its The first term is the dynamic power lost from represent the 2002 threshold or switching voltage, and the exponent charging and discharging the processor’s capaci- ITRS projections α is an experimentally derived constant that, for tive loads: A is the fraction of gates actively switch- normalized to current technology, is approximately 1.3. ing and C is the total capacitance load of all gates. those for 2001. We can use this relation to develop an equation The second term models the static power lost due The dynamic power relating frequency and supply voltage. First, con- to leakage current, Ileak. increase assumes a sider an operating voltage Vnorm and frequency We have ignored power lost to the momentary doubling of on-chip fnorm, which are normalized to the maximum oper- short circuit at a gate’s output whenever the gate devices every two ating voltage Vmax and frequency fmax. Then switches. The loss is relatively small; it contributes years. approximate a linear relationship of frequency to to dynamic power loss, and the equation’s first term voltage with the following equation: can absorb it, if necessary. When dynamic power is the dominant source of Vnorm =β1 +β2 ⋅ fnorm (2) power consumption—as it has been and as it remains today in many less aggressive fabrication where the constants β1 = Vth / Vmax and β2 = 1 −β1. technologies—we can approximate Equation 3 From Equation 1 we see that f = 0 corresponds to with just the first term. Its V2 factor suggests reduc- Vnorm = Vth / Vmax, which for today’s technology is ing supply voltage as the most effective way to approximately 0.3. The simple relationship that decrease power consumption. In fact, halving the Equation 2 expresses closely matches recent indus- voltage will reduce the power consumption by a trial data.4 factor of four. But Equation 2 shows that halving Note that fmax corresponds to Vmax and that, as the voltage will reduce the processor’s maximum the relation in Equation 1 specifies, the frequency operating frequency by more than half. drops to zero when V is reduced to Vth. Equation To compensate for this performance loss, we can 2 also indicates that reducing the operating fre- use either parallel or pipelined implementations. If quency by a particular percentage from fmax will the implementation runs the original serial com- reduce the operating voltage by a smaller percent- putation as two parallel subtasks or as two age. For instance, if we assume β1 = 0.3, reducing pipelined subtasks, the dynamic power consump- the frequency by 50 percent (fnorm = 0.5) will reduce tion can decrease by more than a factor of two the operating voltage by 35 percent (Vnorm = 0.65). compared to the serial case. Of course, the reduc- Conversely, reducing the voltage by half (Vnorm = tion depends on significant parallelism being pre- December 2003 69 sent in the computation, but many important Tox will reduce gate leakage. Unfortunately, it also code classes approximate this condition, degrades the transistor’s effectiveness because Tox Pipelining including digital signal processing and image must decrease proportionally with process scaling is the low-power processing. to avoid short channel effects. Therefore, increas- architectural ing Tox is not an option. The research community Leakage current is instead pursuing the development of high-k solution. But how useful are parallelism and pipelin- dielectric gate insulators. ing for reducing power when static power As with subthreshold leakage, a die’s combined consumption becomes a major component? gate width is a convenient measure of total oxide As noted, leakage current, the source of sta- leakage. tic power consumption, is a combination of sub- threshold and gate-oxide leakage: Ileak = Isub + Iox. Low-power architectural options Subthreshold power leakage. An equation that Because subthreshold and oxide leakage both Anantha Chandrakasan, William Bowhill, and depend on total gate width or, approximately, gate Frank Fox5 present shows how subthreshold leak- count, a pipelined implementation’s contribution age current depends on threshold voltage and sup- to leakage is comparable to the simple serial case, ply voltage: apart from the extra gates that latches introduce to separate the pipe stages. Pipelined implementations (4) can run at a lower voltage, which can reduce power consumption for both dynamic and static power K1and n are experimentally derived, W is the gate compared to the serial case. width, and Vθ in the exponents is the thermal volt- Parallel implementations can also run at a lower age. At room temperature, Vθ is about 25 mV; it voltage, but only by roughly doubling the amount increases linearly as temperature increases. If Isub of hardware. Thus, depending on some of the equa- grows enough to build up heat, Vθ will also start to tions’ experimental constants, the parallel case rise, further increasing Isub and possibly causing could leak more power than the serial case—even thermal runaway. to the point of offsetting any savings in dynamic Equation 4 suggests two ways to reduce Isub. power. First, we could turn off the supply voltage—that is, Pipelining is therefore the low-power solution.
Recommended publications
  • Imperial College London Department of Physics Graphene Field Effect
    Imperial College London Department of Physics Graphene Field Effect Transistors arXiv:2010.10382v2 [cond-mat.mes-hall] 20 Jul 2021 By Mohamed Warda and Khodr Badih 20 July 2021 Abstract The past decade has seen rapid growth in the research area of graphene and its application to novel electronics. With Moore's law beginning to plateau, the need for post-silicon technology in industry is becoming more apparent. Moreover, exist- ing technologies are insufficient for implementing terahertz detectors and receivers, which are required for a number of applications including medical imaging and secu- rity scanning. Graphene is considered to be a key potential candidate for replacing silicon in existing CMOS technology as well as realizing field effect transistors for terahertz detection, due to its remarkable electronic properties, with observed elec- tronic mobilities reaching up to 2 × 105 cm2 V−1 s−1 in suspended graphene sam- ples. This report reviews the physics and electronic properties of graphene in the context of graphene transistor implementations. Common techniques used to syn- thesize graphene, such as mechanical exfoliation, chemical vapor deposition, and epitaxial growth are reviewed and compared. One of the challenges associated with realizing graphene transistors is that graphene is semimetallic, with a zero bandgap, which is troublesome in the context of digital electronics applications. Thus, the report also reviews different ways of opening a bandgap in graphene by using bi- layer graphene and graphene nanoribbons. The basic operation of a conventional field effect transistor is explained and key figures of merit used in the literature are extracted. Finally, a review of some examples of state-of-the-art graphene field effect transistors is presented, with particular focus on monolayer graphene, bilayer graphene, and graphene nanoribbons.
    [Show full text]
  • The Reliability of the Silicon Nitride Dielectric in Capacitive MEMS
    The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Materials Science and Engineering THE RELIABILITY OF THE SILICON NITRIDE DIELECTRIC IN CAPACITIVE MEMS SWITCHES A Thesis in Materials Science and Engineering by Abuzer Dogan © 2005 Abuzer Dogan Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science August 2005 I grant The Pennsylvania State University the nonexclusive right to use this work for the University's own purposes and to make single copies of the work available to the public on a not-for-profit basis if copies are not otherwise available. Abuzer Dogan We approve the thesis of Abuzer Dogan. Date of Signature Susan Trolier-McKinstry Professor of Ceramic Science and Engineering Thesis Advisor Michael Lanagan Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Materials Science and Engineering Mark Horn Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics James P. Runt Professor of Polymer Science Associate Head for Graduate Studies iii ABSTRACT Silicon nitride thin film dielectrics can be used in capacitive radio frequency micro-electromechanical systems switches since they provide a low insertion loss, good isolation, and low return loss. The lifetime of these switches is believed to be adversely affected by charge trapping in the silicon nitride. These charges cause the metal bridge to be partially or fully pulled down, degrading the on-off ratio of the switch. Little information is available in the literature providing a fundamental solution to this problem. Consequently, the goals of this research were to characterize SixNy–based MIM (Metal-Insulator-Metal) capacitors and capacitive MEMS switches to measure the current-voltage response.
    [Show full text]
  • MOSFET Technology Scaling, Leakage Current, and Other Topics
    Chapter 7 MOSFET Technology Scaling, Leakage Current and Other Topics 7.1 Technology Scaling Small is Beautiful YEAR 1992 1995 1997 1999 2001 2004 2007 2010 Technology 0.5 0.35 0.25 0.18 0.13 90 65 45 Generation µµµm µµµm µµµm µµµm µµµm nm nm nm • New technology node every three years or so. Defined by minimum metal line width. • All feature sizes, e.g. gate length, are ~70% of previous node. • Reduction of circuit size by 2 good for cost. Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits (C. Hu) Slide 7-1 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, 1999 Edition Year of Shipment 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 2014 DRAM metal half pitch 180 130 100 70 50 35 (nm) MPU physical Lg (nm) 140 85 65 45 32 22 Tox (nm) 1.5-1.8 1.5-1.9 1-1.5 0.8-1.2 0.6-0.8 0.5-0.6 VDD 1.5-1.8 1.2-1.5 0.9-1.2 0.6-0.9 0.5-0.6 0.3-0.6 µµµ µµµ Ion,HP ( A/ m) 750/350 750/350 750/350 750/350 750/350 750/350 µµµ Ioff,HP (nA/ m) 5 10 20 40 60 160 µµµ µµµ Ion,LP ( A/ m) 490/230 490/230 490/230 490/230 490/230 490/230 µµµ Ioff,LP (pA/ m) 7 10 20 40 80 160 No known solutions •Vdd is reduced at each node to contain power consumption in spite of rising transistor density and frequency •Tox is reduced to raise I on for speed consideration Semiconductor Devices for Integrated Circuits (C.
    [Show full text]
  • Leakage Current and Breakdown Electric-Field Studies on Ultrathin
    APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 87, 182904 ͑2005͒ Leakage current and breakdown electric-field studies on ultrathin atomic-layer-deposited Al2O3 on GaAs ͒ H. C. Lin and P. D. Yea School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 G. D. Wilk Advanced Semiconductor Materials (ASM) America, 3440 East University Drive, Phoenix, Arizona 85034 ͑Received 29 June 2005; accepted 1 September 2005; published online 25 October 2005͒ Atomic-layer deposition ͑ALD͒ provides a unique opportunity to integrate high-quality gate dielectrics on III-V compound semiconductors. We report detailed leakage current and breakdown electric-field characteristics of ultrathin Al2O3 dielectrics on GaAs grown by ALD. The leakage current in ultrathin Al2O3 on GaAs is comparable to or even lower than that of state-of-the-art SiO2 on Si, not counting the high-k dielectric properties for Al2O3. A Fowler-Nordheim tunneling analysis on the GaAs/Al2O3 barrier height is also presented. The breakdown electric field of Al2O3 is measured as high as 10 MV/cm as a bulk property. A significant enhancement on breakdown electric field up to 30 MV/cm is observed as the film thickness approaches to 1 nm. © 2005 American Institute of Physics. ͓DOI: 10.1063/1.2120904͔ Al2O3 is a widely used insulating material for gate di- sured as high as 10 MV/cm for films thicker than 50 Å, electric, tunneling barrier, and protection coating due to its which is near the bulk breakdown electric field for ALD excellent dielectric properties, strong adhesion to dissimilar Al2O3. A significant enhancement on breakdown electric materials, and its thermal and chemical stabilities.
    [Show full text]
  • Analyzing the Effect of Gate Dielectric on the Leakage Currents
    MATEC Web of Conferences57, 01028 (2016) DOI: 10.1051/matecconf/2016 57 01028 ICAET - 2016 Analyzing the effect of gate dielectric on the leakage currents Sakshi, Sandeep Dhariwal and Amandeep Singh Lovely Professional University- Phagwara, India Abstract. An analytical threshold voltage model for MOSFETs has been developed using different gate dielectric oxides by using MATLAB software. This paper explains the dependency of threshold voltage on the dielectric material. The variation in the subthreshold currents with the change in the threshold voltage sue to the change of dielectric material has also been studied. Index Terms— threshold voltage, gate dielectric oxides, subthreshold currents Basic material properties which are important for the selection of alternative gate dielectric are dielectric permittivity, band gap, band alignment with respect to 1 INTRODUCTION silicon, thermodynamic stability, film morphology and Earlier the VLSI designers were mainly concerned about uniformity, interface quality, and reliability [4]. the performance and miniaturization of the VLSI devices. For the last few years, power dissipation has been a serious issue because of the significant growth in portable computing and wireless communication. For more than 40 years, silicon dioxide has been used as dielectric because of its manufacturability and providing a continuous improved transistor performance as it is grown thinner and thinner [1-2]. The scaling of gate dielectric is done to improve the MOS transistor performance. The continuous scaling down of physical thickness of the gate dielectric and gate length has improved device performance and increased packing densities. Because of continuous scaling, the silicon dioxide dielectric thickness has been reduced to such an extent that further scaling will lead to increase in poly- Si gate depletion, gate dopant penetration, power consumption, etc.
    [Show full text]
  • The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT)
    CO2005: Electronics I The Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) 張大中 中央大學 通訊工程系 [email protected] 中央大學通訊系 張大中 Electronics I, Neamen 3th Ed. 1 Bipolar Transistor Structures 19 17 N D 10 N P 10 15 N D 10 中央大學通訊系 張大中 Electronics I, Neamen 3th Ed. 2 Forward-Active Mode in the NPN Transistor Because of the large concentration gradient in the base region, electrons injected from the emitter diffuse across the base into the BC space- charge region, where the E-field e sweeps them into the collector region. 中央大學通訊系 張大中 Electronics I, Neamen 3th Ed. 3 Currents in Emitter, Collector, and Base Emitter Current: Exponential function of the BE voltage Collector Current: Ignoring the recombination in the base region (the base width is very tiny, micrometer), the collect current is proportional to the emitter injection current and is independent of the reverse-biased BC voltage. Hence, the collector current is controlled by the BE voltage. Base Current: BE forward-biased current iB1 N D,E N P,B Base recombination current iB2 iC iB1, iE iB iC iB1 iC 中央大學通訊系 張大中 Electronics I, Neamen 3th Ed. 4 Common-Emitter Configuration i C Common-emitter current gain iB The power supply voltage Vcc iE iB iC (1)iB must be sufficiently large to keep BC junction reverse i i biased. C (1) E 中央大學通訊系 張大中 Electronics I, Neamen 3th Ed. 5 中央大學通訊系 張大中 Electronics I, Neamen 3th Ed. 6 Forward-Active Mode in the PNP Transistor 中央大學通訊系 張大中 Electronics I, Neamen 3th Ed. 7 Circuit Symbols and Conventions The arrowhead is always placed on the emitter terminal, and it indicates the direction of the emitter current.
    [Show full text]
  • Leakage Power in CMOS and Its Reduction Techniques
    ISSN (Print) : 2320 – 3765 ISSN (Online): 2278 – 8875 International Journal of Advanced Research in Electrical, Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering (An ISO 3297: 2007 Certified Organization) Vol. 4, Issue 9, September 2015 Leakage Power in CMOS and Its Reduction Techniques Karunakar Reddy Kallam1, Pradeep Karumanchi2 Final Year B.Tech, Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, UCEK – JNTUK, Andhra Pradesh, India1 Final Year B.Tech, Dept. of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, UCEK – JNTUK, Andhra Pradesh, India2 ABSTRACT:The Power efficiency is the major concern in the field of integrated electronics. With the increase in number of transistors in a chip every year, the complexity of the chip increases and which in turn leads to increase in power consumption levels.Consequently the decrease in transistor gate length as well as path length also led to the increase in resistance of the chip escalating the power usage. So, reduction of power consumption levels has become a desperate task for the researchers all around the world. Leveraging the power includes many techniques like optimizing the logic-design, enhancing the clock distribution network and importantly reduction of power dissipation.Coming to the point of power dissipation,leakage power is one of the major source.Leakage power is primarily the result of unwanted subthreshold current in the transistor channel when the transistor is turned off. Practically, the leakage power has become inevitable.The only thing we are able to do is to reduce the leakage power to some extent.In this paperwe are going to discuss the sources of leakage power and two techniques for mitigating the leakage power which are Transistor stacking and self- adjustable voltage level circuit.
    [Show full text]
  • Leakage Currents in Nanometer CMOS
    ISLPED 06 Proposal for half-day Tutorial Leakage Currents in Nanometer CMOS Domenik Helms Wolfgang Nebel OFFIS Research Institute University of Oldenburg [email protected] [email protected] Abstract: In only 5 years, leakage developed from an academic corner phenomenon to a central problem of embedded system design. In sub 90nm designs the leakage power will be larger than the dynamic power. The intention of this tutorial is to present the state-of-the-art in leakage modelling, estimation and reduction methodologies. Schedule Leakage physics (40 min): From a transistor view, the known sources of leakage are reviewed and their dependencies on physical parameters as temperature, voltage-levels at the terminals, length width and thickness of the structures, doping level, etc. The introduction to the basics of leakage currents enables deeper understanding of the later parts dealing with estimation and optimization of the leakage currents. • Subthreshold current including drain induced barrier lowering (DIBL) and other short channel effects (SCE’s). Especially thermal threshold voltage, body voltage and source voltage dependence is discussed. • Gate leakage presenting an easy quantum-mechanical introduction to the tunnel- effect and discussing different oxide tunnelling mechanisms. Especially influence of gate-voltage, temperature and oxide thickness needs further attention. • PN-junction leakage carried by 3 mechanisms: drift, electron-hole generation and band to band tunnelling (BTBT) with a focus on gate induced drain leakage (GIDL) which will make PN-junction leakage becoming the second largest part in the total leakage budget within the next years. • Hot carrier injection (HCI) and Punchthrough, both having minor impact will be briefly reviewed for the sake of completeness.
    [Show full text]
  • ECE606: Solid State Devices Lecture 18 Bipolar Transistors A
    ECE606: Solid State Devices Lecture 18 Bipolar Transistors a) Introduction b) Design (I) Gerhard Klimeck [email protected] 1 Klimeck – ECE606 Fall 2012 – notes adopted from Alam Background E B C E C Base! Point contact Germanium transistor Ralph Bray from Purdue missed the invention of transistors. http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/david-manners-semiconductor-blog/2009/02/how-purdue-university-nearly-i.html http://www.physics.purdue.edu/about_us/history/semi_conductor_research.shtml Transistor research was also in advanced stages in Europe (radar). Klimeck – ECE606 Fall 2012 – notes adopted from Alam 2 Shockley’s Bipolar Transistors … n+ emitter n+ Double p base n-collector Diffused BJT n+ n+ p n n+ emitter base collector Klimeck – ECE606 Fall 2012 – notes adopted from Alam Modern Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs) Base Emitter Collector N+ N- P+ N+ N SiGe intrinsic base P- Dielectric trench Why do we need all these design? Transistor speed increases as the electron's travel distance is reduced SiGe Layer Klimeck – ECE606 Fall 2012 – notes adopted from Alam 4 Symbols and Convention E Symbols Poly emitter N+ NPN PNP Collector B P Low-doped base Collector Base Base N Collector doping optimization Emitter Emitter C IC+I B+I E=0 (DC) VEB +V BC +V CE =0 Klimeck – ECE606 Fall 2012 – notes adopted from Alam 5 Outline 1) Equilibrium and forward band-diagram 2) Currents in bipolar junction transistors 3) Eber’s Moll model 4) Intermediate Summary 5) Current gain in BJTs 6) Considerations for base doping 7) Considerations for collector doping
    [Show full text]
  • Leakage Power Reduction Techniques in CMOS VLSI Circuits – a Survey
    ISSN: 2455-2631 © May 2016 IJSDR | Volume 1, Issue 5 Leakage Power Reduction Techniques in CMOS VLSI Circuits – A Survey 1D.vijayalakshmi, 2Dr P.C Kishore Raja 1Assistant Professor, BIT, Bangalore 2HOD, Department of E&C, Saveetha University Abstract: This paper covers the various techniques used to reduce Leakage power in CMOS circuits. The CMOS has been the leading technology in today’s world of mobile communication due to its low power consumption. Reduction of leakage power in CMOS has been the research interest for the last couple of years. In CMOS integrated circuit design there is an important trade-off between technology scaling and static power consumption. In today’s CMOS technology the leakage power consumption plays a significant role. As we approach Nano-scale design the total chip power consumption becomes dependent on leakage power. Increasing the battery life in mobile wireless communication and mobile computing and similar other applications is the topic of research nowadays. Further, since the leakage of battery exists even when devices are in idle state makes leakage power loss most critical in CMOS VLSI circuits. Many techniques have been evolved to tackle the problem and it is still in progress. This paper also focuses on a new technique called scan chain technique. Keywords: CMOS, Leakage power, VLSI circuits, multimedia applications, Static power, Nano Scale, LSSR, DUT 1. Introduction The rapid growth in semiconductor technology through the use of deep-sub micron processes has led the feature sizes to be shrinking; thereby integrating extremely complex functionality on a single chip. In the ever increasing market of mobile hand- held devices used all over the world today, the battery-powered electronic system forms the backbone.
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 6 Leakage and Low-Power Design
    Lecture 6 Leakage and Low-Power Design R. Saleh Dept. of ECE University of British Columbia [email protected] RAS Lecture 6 1 Methods of Reducing Leakage Power • So far we have discussed dynamic power reduction techniques which result from switching-related currents • The transistor also exhibits many current leakage mechanisms that cause power dissipation when it is not switching • In this lecture, we will explore the different types of leakage currents and their trends • We will then describe ways to limit various types of leakage • We will also re-examine the DSM transistor in more detail as a side-effect of this study • Readings: – Sections of Chapter 2 and 3 in HJS – Many books and papers on DSM leakage power – Alvin Loke Presentation (SSCS Technical Seminar, 2007) RAS Lecture 6 2 Basic CMOS Transistor Structure • Typical process today uses twin-tub CMOS technology • Shallow-trench isolation, thin-oxide, lightly-doped drain/source • Salicided drain/source/gate to reduce resistance • extensive channel engineering for VT-adjust, punchthrough prevention, etc. • Need to examine some details to understand leakage n+ n+ p+ p+ STI p-well STI n-well STI common substrate RAS Lecture 6 3 Sources of Leakages Leakage is a big problem in the recent CMOS technology nodes A variety of leakage mechanisms exist in the DSM transistor Acutal leakage levels vary depending on biasing and physical parameters at the technology node (doping, tox, VT, W, L, etc.) I1: Subthreshold Current I2: DIBL I2’: Punchthrough I3: Thin Oxide Gate Tunneling I4: GIDL I5:
    [Show full text]
  • AN-1001 Understanding Power MOSFET Parameters
    AN-1001 Understanding Power MOSFET Parameters www.taiwansemi.com Taiwan Semiconductor Content 1. Absolute Maximum Ratings ................................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Drain-Source Voltage (VDS) ............................................................................................................................. 3 1.2 Gate-Source Voltage (VGS) .............................................................................................................................. 3 1.3 Continuous Drain Current (ID) ......................................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Pulsed Drain Current (IDM) .............................................................................................................................. 4 1.5 Single Pulse Avalanche Current (IAS) ............................................................................................................... 4 1.6 Single Pulse Avalanche Energy (EAS) ............................................................................................................... 4 1.7 Total Power Dissipation (PD) ........................................................................................................................... 5 1.8 Operating Junction and Storage Temperature Range (TJ,TSTG) ...................................................................... 5 2. Thermal Performance ...........................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]