On Design of Low Cost Power Supply Noise Detection Sensor for Microprocessors

Abstract

Recent trends in CMOS technology scaling have resulted in increased transistor density, higher clock speed and reduced cost per transistor. However technology scaling has also resulted in increased Power Supply Noise (PSN). Power supply noise can result in erroneous computation, reduced performance and lower reliability. Current PSN detectors require either golden supply voltage as reference or bulky analog to digital conversion circuits. This paper introduces a novel PSN detector for active power management in Microprocessors. The proposed detector makes use of the dynamic shift in Voltage Transfer Characteristics(VTC) of an inverter due to supply noise. Simulation results of the proposed PSN detector in 45-nm CMOS technology shows that the detector can detect overshoots or undershoots as small as 10 mV and 100 ps wide. Moreover, the detector works with 10 mV accuracy for a wide temperature range.