Design and application of multimodal power gating structures

Designing a power-gating structure with high performance in the active mode and low leakage and short wakeup time during standby mode is an important and challenging task. This paper presents a tri-modal switch cell that enables implementation of multimodal power gating, including active, data-retentive drowsy, and deep sleep modes. A circuit realization and design methodology are presented that allow one to take advantage of the ultra low leakage deep sleep mode, low leakage, but very fast wakeup, drowsy mode, and an additional low leakage data-retentive mode. Experimental results demonstrate the benefits of this new switch and corresponding power gating technique.