Ultra-low Dynamic Voltage Scaling Fequency-Ratio-Based PVT Sensor Design and Applications

• Main Authors: Lin, Shang-Yaun, 林上圓
• Other Authors: Hwang, Wei
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/78779225840424367622

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 電子研究所 === 100 === With process scaling down continuously, high level of integration introduces the problem of self-heating. To perform thermal management, this thesis proposes 0.5V~0.25V process voltage and temperature (PVT) sensors with adaptive voltage selection operating over an ultra-low supply voltage range from 0.25V~0.5V with 2.3μW power consumption and 50k samples/sec conversion rate. Next, the 0.4V fully integrated process invariant temperature sensor is proposed. The effect of process variation is significantly reduced. The realization meets the target to be capable of 0.4V supply voltage operation over the temperature range of 0˚C to 100˚C. The area of the sensor core (without I/O pads) is only 990μm2. The power consumption per conversion rate is 11.6pJ/sample. The high area/energy efficiency characteristics make the proposed sensor applicable for energy-limited miniature portable platforms. Finally, the heterogeneous three dimension integrated circuit (3D-IC) architecture is presented. To prevent hot spot on the intra layer and reduce refresh power on DRAM layer, we proposed a DRAM refresh controller utilizing the process invariant temperature sensor. Thanks for tiny power consumption of temperature sensors, the refresh controller reduces standby power significantly, 67.67% without much power overhead.