Title :
A Leakage Current Replica Keeper for Dynamic Circuits
Author :
Lih, Yolin ; Tzartzanis, Nestoras ; Walker, William W.
Abstract :
We present a leakage current replica (LCR) keeper for dynamic domino gates that uses an analog current mirror to replicate the leakage current of a dynamic gate pull-down stack and thus tracks process, voltage, and temperature. The proposed keeper has an overhead of one field-effect transistor per gate plus a portion of a shared current mirror. Techniques for properly sizing LCR keepers are presented. Using these sizings, LCR keepers allow design of and-or circuits with 30% more legs than conventional keepers at the same noise margin in a 90-nm, 1.2-V CMOS logic process. Furthermore, 16-24-leg dynamic AO circuits are 25%-40% faster when using the replica keeper. We demonstrated the circuit operation on a 1024 words times 72 bits, 3W/4R embedded SRAM macro using a four-stage LCR-keeper domino structure for a read-out circuit
Keywords :
CMOS logic circuits; SRAM chips; current mirrors; field effect transistors; leakage currents; logic gates; readout electronics; 1.2 V; 90 nm; AND-OR circuits; CMOS logic process; SRAM; analog current mirror; domino gates; gate pull-down stack; leakage current replica keeper; readout circuit; CMOS logic circuits; CMOS process; Circuit noise; FETs; Leakage current; Leg; Logic design; Mirrors; Temperature; Voltage; Dynamic logic; SRAM; keeper; leakage; precharged logic; process variation; register file;
Journal_Title :
Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of
DOI :
10.1109/JSSC.2006.885051
