Effectiveness of adaptive supply voltage and body bias for reducing impact of parameter variations in low power and high performance microprocessors

Author

Tschanz, James W. ; Narendra, Siva ; Nair, Raj ; De, Vivek

Author_Institution

Microprocessor Res. Labs., Hillsboro, OR, USA

Volume

38

Issue

5

fYear

2003

fDate

5/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

826

Lastpage

829

Abstract

Adaptive supply voltage as well as adaptive body bias may be used to control the frequency and leakage distribution of fabricated microprocessor dies. Test chip measurements show that adaptive V_CC is effective in reducing the impact of parameter variations on frequency, active power, and leakage power of microprocessors when 20 mV V_CC resolution is used. Using adaptive V_CC together with adaptive V_BS or within-die body bias is much more effective than using any of them individually.

Keywords

CMOS digital integrated circuits; adaptive control; leakage currents; low-power electronics; microprocessor chips; voltage control; CMOS digital ICs; active power; adaptive body bias; adaptive supply voltage; forward bias; frequency; high performance microprocessors; leakage distribution control; leakage power; low-power microprocessors; parameter variations; within-die variation; Adaptive control; CMOS technology; Circuit testing; Frequency; MOS devices; Microprocessors; Power measurement; Programmable control; Semiconductor device measurement; Voltage control;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSSC.2003.810053

Filename

1196229