A Sub-μ W Reversed-Body-Bias 8-bit Processor on 65-nm Silicon-on-Thin-Box (SOTB) for IoT Applications

Abstract

For most Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, embedded processors typically execute lightweight tasks such as sensing and communication. The typical IoT program senses some information and sends them via a channel, usually a wireless channel with an RF circuit. These IoT nodes often require a system with networking capabilities and a low-power harvester implementation. This brief presents a sub- μW 8-bit processor which is suitable for such IoT applications. The processor implements the Open8 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) with an 8-bit datapath and 16-bit bus addressing. The chip contains the processor and a 4-KB of Static Random-Access-Memory (SRAM), and is fabricated by the 65-nm Silicon-On-Thin-Box (SOTB) process. The SOTB process is one of the Fully-Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FD-SOI) technology. Hence, the ability to control biasing voltages is one of its key advantages to achieve low-power. The experimental results show that the power consumption at the reverse-body bias can reach down to 50-nW with 0.5-V supply voltage and 32-KHz operating clock frequency. The completed microcontroller consists of the Open8 processor, 32-KB of Read-Only-Memory (ROM), 4-KB of SRAM, Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), SPI programmer, debug module, General-Purpose In-Outs (GPIOs), and UART. The system was tested using an XC7A100T Xilinx Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA); it yielded 1.8% of the total FPGA utilization.