Low Power Design Techniques for Integrated Circuits

Abstract

It is essential to retain power and energy efficiency in low-power integrated circuits (ICs) over a wide load current/voltage range to reduce the consumption from the battery in portable/non-portable devices. The power/energy efficiency highly depends on voltage and frequency scaling when all the parts of the devices are in operation. There are also power and clock gating when all the parts of the devices are not in operation. The dynamic and static voltage scaling are main part for power gating. The power saving can be done by varying the supply voltage to ICs. The pulse width, pulse skip, depth and frequency modulation are common techniques for clock gating/frequency generation. The pulse width modulation (PWM) is generally used for fixed frequency operation. The pulse frequency modulation (PFM) is generally used for variable frequency operation depending on load voltage and current demands. The pulse skip modulation (PSM) is special technique to skip the pulses for frequency operation depending on IC operation mode (sleep mode and standby mode). In this chapter, all the existing techniques available for power reduction are discussed with the suitable diagram and examples.