Experimental validation of minimum operating-voltage-estimation for low supply voltage circuits

摘要

Sub- and near-threshold circuits have been attracting growing interests because they are suitable for realizing extremely low power and low energy circuits. The estimation of the minimum operating voltage (VDDmin), under which the circuit does not function correctly, is one of the most important issues in their design. In this paper, the distribution of VDDmin is explored through simulations and measurements. Lognormal model-approximation and a quick VDDmin estimation method are validated by the measurements of 124k FFs. Assuming that the VDDmin of a circuit is limited by that of the FFs, VDDmin distribution for any circuits can be efficiently estimated. The measurements of 192 DCT circuits show that the estimation matches with silicon data very well within 10 mV error.