A PVT aware differential delay circuit and its performance variation due to power supply noise

Abstract

Delay circuits are one of the key components in time domain blocks such as pulse width modulator. This work describes the working of a differential delay circuit under process, voltage and temperature. The proposed design is also coupled to a typical power delivery network (PDN) and a central processing unit (CPU) core ramping current from 0 A to 10–40A in 10 ns Simulated in a 90-nm CMOS technology and power supply voltage (Vdd) of 1.1 V, the post-layout delay was noted to be 227 ps During this time, differential signals at the input are switching at 1GHz while the rise, fall times are about 0.1ns The power thus dissipated corresponds to 235 μW. But, delay changes by about 0.4–0.9 ps at every process corner while temperature increases by 1OC. The corresponding variation for 1mV drop in power supply voltage is 0.1–0.4ps In addition to that, a change in temperature enables the average power to fluctuate between 192.8 and 264μW, whereas, 0.6μW for 1mV drop in power supply voltage. The study of 500 runs Monte-Carlo analysis for a NN process indicates an almost identical behavior with the no skew data in post-layout. The rms jitter is within 0.01–0.3ps while the delay per mV change in power supply is 0.21 ps/mV. But a sudden current drawn by the CPU causes the voltage VP close to the die to oscillate. This enables the delay to vary than those obtained with zero power supply noise. The sudden current also introduces jitter in the output swing. The jitter so induced varies linearly with the AC first droop.