Ultra-low power dissipation of improved complementary pass-transistor adiabatic logic circuits based on FinFETs

Abstract

With the technology scaling down, low power dissipation has become one of the research focuses in the field of integrated circuit design. Various types of adiabatic logics have been invented for low-power applications. However, the expanding leakage current degrades the performance of conventional adiabatic logics. In this article, a novel improved complementary pass-transistor adiabatic logic (ICPAL) based on fin-type field-effect transistor (FinFET) devices with ultra-low power dissipation has been presented. The proposed ICPAL takes full advantage of different FinFET operating modes, that is, shorted-gate mode, independent-gate mode, and low-power mode, to make a tremendous reduction in power dissipation. For explication and verification, the power dissipation of different ICPAL standard cells has been investigated and compared with other types of adiabatic circuits based on FinFETs. The results show that the ICPAL circuits have ultra-low power dissipation in a wide range of clock frequencies(30–800 MHz) under the condition of similar number of transistors, and the average reduction in power dissipation is about 23.1%, 75.0%, and 50.0% relative to 2N-2N2P, improved pass-transistor adiabatic logic, and complimentary pass-transistor adiabatic logic, respectively. Furthermore, ICPAL supports a better pre-evaluation of system power dissipation in VLSI design and has an intrinsic characteristic for the resistance to some types of side channel attacks.