Design and Performance Analysis of 1-Bit FinFET Full Adder Cells for Subthreshold Region at 16 nm Process Technology

Abstract

The scaling process of the conventional 2D-planar metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) is now approaching its limit as technology has reached below 20 nm process technology. A new nonplanar device architecture called FinFET was invented to overcome the problem by allowing transistors to be scaled down into sub-20 nm region. In this work, the FinFET structure is implemented in 1-bit full adder transistors to investigate its performance and energy efficiency in the subthreshold region for cell designs of Complementary MOS (CMOS), Complementary Pass-Transistor Logic (CPL), Transmission Gate (TG), and Hybrid CMOS (HCMOS). The performance of 1-bit FinFET-based full adder in 16-nm technology is benchmarked against conventional MOSFET-based full adder. The Predictive Technology Model (PTM) and Berkeley Shortchannel IGFET Model-Common Multi-Gate (BSIM-CMG) 16 nm low power libraries are used. Propagation delay, average power dissipation, power-delay-product (PDP), and energy-delay-product (EDP) are analysed based on all four types of full adder cell designs of both FETs. The 1-bit FinFET-based full adder shows a great reduction in all four metric performances. A reduction in propagation delay, PDP, and EDP is evident in the 1-bit FinFET-based full adder of CPL, giving the best overall performance due to its high-speed performance and good current driving capabilities.