Power consumption has become a major design consideration for battery-operated, portable systems as well as high-performance, desktop systems. Strict limitations on power dissipation must be met by the designer while still meeting ever higher computational requirements. A comprehensive approach is thus required at all levels of system design, ranging from algorithms and architectures to the logic styles and the underlying technology. Potentially one of the most important techniques involves combining architecture optimization with voltage scaling, allowing a trade-off between silicon area and low-power operation. Architectural optimization enables supply voltages of the order of 1 V using standard CMOS technology. Several techniques can also be used to minimize the switched capacitance, including representation, optimizing signal correlations, minimizing spurious transitions, optimizing sequencing of operations, activity-driven power down, etc. The high- efficiency of DC-DC converter circuitry required for efficient, low-voltage and low-current level operation is described by Stratakos, Sullivan and Sanders. The application of various low-power techniques to a chip set for multimedia applications shows that orders-of-magnitude reduction in power consumption is possible. The book also features an analysis by Professor Meindl of the fundamental limits of power consumption achievable at all levels of the design hierarchy. Svensson, of ISI, describes emerging adiabatic switching techniques that can break the CV2f barrier and reduce the energy per computation at a fixed voltage. Srivastava, of AT&T, presents the application of aggressive shut-down techniques to microprocessor applications.

Based on the work of MIT graduate students Alice Wang and Benton Calhoun, this book surveys the field of sub-threshold and low-voltage design and explores such aspects of sub-threshold circuit design as modeling, logic and memory circuit design. One important chapter of the book is dedicated to optimizing energy dissipation - a key metric for energy constrained designs. This book also includes invited chapters on the subject of analog sub-threshold circuits.

Covers in detail promising solutions at the device, circuit, and architecture levels of abstraction after first explaining the sensitivity of the various MOS leakage sources to these conditions from the first principles.

Also treated are the resulting effects so the reader understands the effectiveness of leakage power reduction solutions under these different conditions.

Case studies supply real-world examples that reap the benefits of leakage power reduction solutions as the book highlights different device design choices that exist to mitigate increases in the leakage components as technology scales.

The goal of Leakage in Nanometer CMOS Technologies is to provide ample detail so that the reader can understand why leakage power components are becoming increasingly relevant in CMOS systems that use nanometer scale MOS devices. Leakage current sources at the MOS device level including sub-threshold and different types of tunneling are discussed in detail. The book covers promising solutions at the device, circuit, and architecture levels of abstraction. Manifestation of these MOS device leakage components at the full chip level depends considerably on several aspects including the nature of the circuit block, its state, its application workload, and Process/Voltage/Temperature conditions. The sensitivity of the various MOS leakage sources to these conditions are described from the first principles. The resulting manifestations are discussed at length to help the reader understand the effectiveness of leakage power reduction solutions under these different conditions. Case studies are presented to highlight real world examples that reap the benefits of leakage power reduction solutions. mitigate increases in the leakage components as technology scales.

Power consumption has become a major design consideration for battery-operated, portable systems as well as high-performance, desktop systems. Strict limitations on power dissipation must be met by the designer while still meeting ever higher computational requirements. A comprehensive approach is thus required at all levels of system design, ranging from algorithms and architectures to the logic styles and the underlying technology. Potentially one of the most important techniques involves combining architecture optimization with voltage scaling, allowing a trade-off between silicon area and low-power operation. Architectural optimization enables supply voltages of the order of 1 V using standard CMOS technology. Several techniques can also be used to minimize the switched capacitance, including representation, optimizing signal correlations, minimizing spurious transitions, optimizing sequencing of operations, activity-driven power down, etc. The high- efficiency of DC-DC converter circuitry required for efficient, low-voltage and low-current level operation is described by Stratakos, Sullivan and Sanders. The application of various low-power techniques to a chip set for multimedia applications shows that orders-of-magnitude reduction in power consumption is possible. The book also features an analysis by Professor Meindl of the fundamental limits of power consumption achievable at all levels of the design hierarchy. Svensson, of ISI, describes emerging adiabatic switching techniques that can break the CV2f barrier and reduce the energy per computation at a fixed voltage. Srivastava, of AT&T, presents the application of aggressive shut-down techniques to microprocessor applications.