Ultra-Low-Voltage Design of Energy-Efficient Digital Circuits

This book focuses on increasing the energy-efficiency of electronic devices so that portable applications can have a longer stand-alone time on the same battery. The authors explain the energy-efficiency benefits that ultra-low-voltage circuits provide and provide answers to tackle the challenges which ultra-low-voltage operation poses. An innovative design methodology is presented, verified, and validated by four prototypes in advanced CMOS technologies. These prototypes are shown to achieve high energy-efficiency through their successful functionality at ultra-low supply voltages.

Introduction.- Sub-Threshold Operation: Theory and Challenges.- Gate-Level Building Blocks.- Architectural Design.- Datapath Blocks.- JPEG Encoder.- Conclusion.

The scientific interest of W. Dehaene is situated in the general domain of micro-electronics. The focus is on circuits and architectures. In the beginning the research concentrated on analog circuits, mainly during the PhD work. During the industrial part of the career at Alcatel Microelectronics this was expanded towards architectural and system design. The circuit level however always was prominently present. When research goes into systems and architecture the extension towards digital hardware and even software becomes a relatively small step. When going back to the academic world, the focus is again on circuit level but now for digital systems. A lot of the problems in digital circuit design are of an analog nature: e.g. the combination of low power and high speed. A knowledge that crosses both the analog and digital domain is here thus essential. Summarizing the research interest in a one-liner gives: “mixed analog digital systems with a focus on circuit-architecture level.”