In the last installment of Analog Domain, I began a summary of Klaas Bult's analysis on the effect of technology scaling on power dissipation (references 1 and 2). This column replicates the minimum-circuit model and Bult's Algorithm for reference (figures 1 and 2). The algorithm depends on three process-dependent quantities and eight application-dependent parameters. It calculates six circuit measures, the last of which is the minimum power dissipation for the minimum circuit. Bult's analysis does hang on a few assumptions, but more than a decade of silicon-process history supports them, as do the foreseeable trends in silicon-process development.
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