The first SOTB implementation of Flex Power FPGA

Abstract

Flex Power FPGA uses body biasing technique to implement the fine-grained threshold voltage (Vt) programmability in the FPGA. Low-Vt state can be assigned only to the component circuits along the critical path of the application design mapped on the FPGA, so that the static leakage power consumption, one of the most serious issues in the modern FPGA, can be reduced drastically. Flex Power FPGA is an important application target for the SOTB (Silicon On Thin BOX) device, which is renowned for its excellent Vt controllability. For the first time, SOTB version of the Flex Power FPGA test chip has been fabricated, and its functional test and performance evaluation have been performed successfully. In this paper, overview of this SOTB version test chip and its evaluation results are reported.