4-bit Flash Research Articles

An analog to digital converter in a SiC CMOS technology for high-temperature applications

Integrated circuits based on wide bandgap semiconductors are considered an attractive option for meeting the demand for high-temperature electronics. Here, we report an analog-to-digital converter fabricated in a silicon carbide complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor technology now available through Europractice. The MOSFET component in this technology was measured up to 500 °C, and the key parameters, such as threshold voltage, field-effect mobility, and channel-length modulation parameters, were extracted. A 4-bit flash data converter, consisting of 266 transistors, is implemented with this technology and demonstrates correct operation up to 400 °C. Finally, the gate oxide quality is investigated by time-dependent dielectric breakdown measurements at 500 °C. A field-acceleration factor of 4.4 dec/(MV/cm) is obtained by applying the E model.

500 MS/s 4-Bit Flash ADC with Complementary Architecture

This paper proposes a 500 MS/s 4-bit flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) featuring a differential input voltage range of 1.2 V<sub>pp</sub> operating at a supply voltage of 1.2 V. Although the proposed circuit utilizes a conventional flash ADC structure, its track and hold circuit, driving buffer, and preamp circuits corresponding to the analog stages are designed using complementary architecture to attain a sufficient swing range even at a low supply voltage. Notably, the proposed structure satisfies the error requirements. The error source of the flash ADC, such as the comparator’s input referred offset, did not degrade its performance, while the use of a calibration circuit, characterized by power consumption and area burdens and increased complexity, could also be avoided. Therefore, the proposed flash ADC met the error requirements, such as the comparator’s input referred offset, without the need for calibration circuits. The chip, fabricated using the TSMC 65 nm process, covers an area of 1,160 × 950 μm<sup>2</sup> and consumes 78 mW of power. Furthermore, its signal-to-noise and distortion ratio and spurious-free dynamic range were measured to be 23.36 dB and 30.26 dB, respectively, at a sampling frequency of 500 MHz.

Monolithically Integrated Complementary Ferroelectric FET XNOR Synapse for the Binary Neural Network.

Neuromorphic computing, which mimics the structure and principles of the human brain, has the potential to facilitate the hardware implementation of next-generation artificial intelligence systems and process large amounts of data with very low power consumption. Among them, the XNOR synapse-based Binary Neural Network (BNN) has been attracting attention due to its compact neural network parameter size and low hardware cost. The previous XNOR synapse has drawbacks, such as a trade-off between cell density and accuracy. In this work, we show nonvolatile XNOR synapses with high density and accuracy using a monolithically stacked complementary ferroelectric field-effect transistor (C-FeFET) composed of a p-type Si MFMIS-FeFET at the bottom and a 3D stackable n-type Al:IZTO MFS-FeTFT, achieving 60F2 per cell (2C-FeFET). For adjusting the threshold voltage and improving the switching speed (100 ns) of n-type ferroelectric TFT, we employed a dual-gate configuration and a unique operation scheme, making it comparable to those of Si-based FeFETs. We performed array-level simulation with a 512 × 512 subarray size and a 3-bit flash ADC, demonstrating that the image recognition accuracies using the MNIST and CIFAR-10 data sets were increased by 3.17 and 14.07%, respectively, in comparison to other nonvolatile XNOR synapses. In addition, we performed system-level analysis on a 512 × 512 XNOR C-FeFET, exhibiting an outstanding throughput of 717.37 GOPS and an energy efficiency of 196.7 TOPS/W. We expect that our approach would contribute to the high-density memory systems, logic-in-memory technology, and hardware implementation of neural networks.

A 10-kHz BW 104.3-dB DR discrete-time delta-sigma modulator with ring-amplifier-based integrator

This paper presents a 3rd-order discrete-time delta-sigma modulator (DT DSM) with ring-amplifier-based integrators. To fulfill the performance requirement of the switched-capacitor (SC) integrator for the DSM with low power consumption, a dynamic ring amplifier is employed to replace the conventional continuous-time operation transconductance amplifier (OTA) in the integrator. The offset and 1/f noise of the 1st-stage integrator are further suppressed with an auto-zero structure. The quantizer is realized by a 3-bit flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to reduce the quantization noise power, while the mismatch in the feedback digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is suppressed by a dynamic weighting averaging (DWA) circuit. The DT DSM prototype is fabricated with a 0.18-μm CMOS process with an active area of 1.39 mm2, achieving 99.3 dB SNDR and 104.3 dB DR with a signal bandwidth of 10 kHz and an oversampling ratio of 128. The power consumption is 963.9 μW under a 3.3V power supply, corresponding to a Schreier figure-of-merit(FoMs) value of 174.5 dB.

Circuit Design of 3- and 4-Bit Flash Analog-to-Digital Converters Based on Memristors

Given its advantageous power- and area-efficiency characteristics and its compatibility with traditional CMOS technology, the memristor has emerged as a promising candidate for low-power applications. To leverage these capacities, a new edge-triggered DFF was proposed, feeding back the master latches’ output to the input of the memristor-based NOR two-stage inverse-phase memristor-based master–slave DFF. Then, a 3-bit flash ADC was designed using the new DFF and simulated to demonstrate its feasibility and correctness. Additionally, a 4-bit flash ADC was implemented and utilized to sample an analog signal, resulting in a correct digital signal. Herein, the 50 nm BSIM4 models were applied. The 3- and 4-bit flash ADCs, respectively, consumed 1.33 mw and 5.84 mw power at a 1 V supply with delay times of 17.8 ns and 70 ns. Compared with previous work, the new 4-bit flash ADC has fewer transistors and smaller power consumption, with about a 25.57% reduction according to the 90 nm process.

Spin–orbit torque flash analog-to-digital converter

Although analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are critical components in mixed-signal integrated circuits (IC), their performance has not been improved significantly over the last decade. To achieve a radical improvement (compact, low power and reliable ADCs), spintronics can be considered as a proper candidate due to its compatibility with CMOS and wide applications in storage, neuromorphic computing, and so on. In this paper, a proof-of-concept of a 3-bit spin-CMOS Flash ADC using in-plane-anisotropy magnetic tunnel junctions (i-MTJs) with spin–orbit torque (SOT) switching mechanism is designed, fabricated and characterized. In this ADC, each MTJ plays the role of a comparator whose threshold is set by the engineering of the heavy metal (HM) width. Such an approach can reduce the ADC footprint. Monte-Carlo simulations based on the experimental measurements show the process variations/mismatch limits the accuracy of the proposed ADC to 2 bits. Moreover, the maximum differential nonlinearity (DNL) and integral nonlinearity (INL) are 0.739 LSB (least significant bit) and 0.7319 LSB, respectively.

A Single-Loop Third-Order 10-MHz BW Source-Follower-Integrator Based Discrete-Time Delta-Sigma ADC

This brief presents a single-loop third-order discrete-time delta-sigma ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ {\Delta } {\Sigma }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The proposed <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ {\Delta } {\Sigma }$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ADC employs source-follower (SF)-based open-loop switched-capacitor (SC) integrators to achieve high-speed operation with efficient power consumption. A modified feed-forward topology is proposed to improve the linearity of the modulator using the SF-based integrators. An interpolating 4-bit flash quantizer with an embedded data weighted averaging (DWA) function is employed to address the nonlinearity of the feedback digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for high speed operation. The prototype ADC implemented in a 65nm CMOS technology achieves 75.4-dB dynamic range (DR) and 73.3-dB peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) over 10-MHz bandwidth with an oversampling ratio (OSR) of 16. The power consumption of the modulator is 13.3-mW from a 1.1-V supply, resulting in the Walden and Schreier figure-of-merits (FoMW and FoMS) of 174-fJ/conversion-step and 164-dB, respectively.

Design and Integration of NAND Flash Memory Controller for Open Power-based Fabless SoC

NAND Flash Memory has replaced EEPROM and hard drives as Non-volatile. Data is stored in sequential order in NAND Flash Memory. NAND Memory is a type of flash memory widely used in mobile phones and System on Chips (SoC). The Memory controller supports an 8-bit NAND Flash interface and streaming interface towards АXI4. The data transfer between АXI4 and NAND Flash Memory is carried оut by using NAND Flash commands sequences. The AXI4 Interface enables the usage of various рrоtосоls. To improve the flash memory controller's data access speed. This project intends to design, develop, and integrate a NAND Flash memory controller using an AXI4 interface for an open POWER Processor A20 fabless SOC. The Flash Memory Controller includes Finite State Machines (FSM) and AXI4 bridge logic. Using Mentor Graphics® and Xilinx's Vivado design suite, the test results were based on behavioral simulation and synthesis

Design of a Low-Power and Low-Area 8-Bit Flash ADC Using a Double-Tail Comparator on 180 nm CMOS Process

This paper presents a low-area 8-bit flash ADC that consumes low power. The flash ADC includes four main blocks-an analog multiplexer (MUX), a comparator, an encoder, and an SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) block. The MUX allows the selection between eight analog inputs. The comparator block contains a TIQ (Threshold Inverter Quantization) comparator, a control circuit, and a proposed architecture of a Double-Tail (DT) comparator. The advantage of using the DT comparator is to reduce the number of comparators by half, which helps reduce the design area. The SPI block can provide a simple way for the ADC to interface with microcontrollers. This mixed-signal circuitry is designed and simulated using 180 nm CMOS technology. The 8-bit flash ADC only employs 128 comparators. The applied input clock is 80 MHz, with the input voltage ranging from 0.6 V to 1.8 V. The comparator block outputs 127 bits of thermometer code and sends them to the encoder, which exports the seven least significant bits (LSB) of the binary code. The most significant bit (MSB) is decided by only one DT comparator. The design consumes 2.81 mW of power on average. The total area of the layout is 0.088 mm2. The figure of merit (FOM) is about 877 fJ/step. The research ends up with a fabricated chip with the design inserted into it.

Impact of gamma radiation on 8051 microcontroller performance

Studying the effects of gamma radiation on the instrumentation and control (I&C) system of a nuclear power plant is critical to the successful and reliable operation of the plant. In the accidental scenario, the adverse environment of ionizing radiation affects the performance of the I&C system and it leads to inaccurate and incomprehensible results. This paper reports the effects of gamma radiation on the AT89C51RD2, a commercial-off-the-shelf 8-bit high-performance flash microcontroller. The microcontroller, selected for the device under test for this study is used in the remote terminal unit for a nuclear power plant. The custom circuits were made to test the microcontroller under different gamma doses using a 60Co gamma source in both ex-situ and in-situ modes. The device was exposed to a maximum dose of 1.5 kGy. Under this hostile environment, the performance of the microcontroller was studied in terms of device current and voltage changes. It was observed that the microcontroller device can operate up to a total absorbed dose of approximately 0.6 kGy without any failure or degradation in its performance.

A 4th-Order 4-Bit Continuous-Time ΔΣ ADC Based on Active–Passive Integrators With a Resistance Feedback DAC

This article reports a fourth-order continuous-time (CT) delta&#x2013;sigma modulator (DSM) that features a single-amplifier biquad, a passive integrator, and an active integrator. This simplifies the circuit to only two op-amps in comparison to four power-hungry op-amps used in a conventional fourth-order DSM. In addition to improving the power consumption, the proposed design also has more relaxed requirements for the gain&#x2013;bandwidth product and the loop gain. A 4-bit flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and two feedback digital-to-analog converters (DACs) are employed in this design to implement a fully integrated CT DSM. By incorporating the passive network in front of the last active integrator, this design gives a better attenuation at high frequency, which decreases the possibility of instability caused by out-of-band high-frequency signals. The proposed design has a measured bandwidth of 2 MHz with a power consumption of only around 3 mW. The effective number of bits (ENOB) of the proposed CT-DSM is approximately 12.7 bits with a peak signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) around 78 dB, and it also exhibits a good Schreier figure of merit on the order of 166 dB compared to the existing state of the art.

A 5-GS/s 6-Bit 15.07-mW Flash ADC With Partially Active Second-Stage Comparison and 2× Time-Domain Interpolation

This article presents a 5-GS/s 6-bit flash analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in a 28-nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) CMOS process. The ADC jointly employs partially active second-stage comparison and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> time-domain latch interpolation (TDI) to reduce power consumption and avoid extensive calibrations. To enhance the conversion speed of the second-stage structure, the stringent timing constraint is resolved by a 25%–75% duty-cycle clock scheme, a 0.5-bit redundancy in the first comparison stage, and an embedded second-stage slice selection logic. The bandwidth requirements of the track-and-hold (T/H) and T/H buffer under the 25%–75% duty-cycle clock are analyzed. An on-chip successive-approximation (SA)-based comparator offset calibration scheme utilizing FDSOI back-gate bias is also developed, providing sufficient calibration range without impairing comparator speed. The measured prototype achieves a signal-to-noise and distortion ratio (SNDR) of 32.8 dB and a spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 41.82 dB at Nyquist frequency while consuming 15.07 mW power, translating into a Walden figure-of-merit (FOM) of 84.5 fJ/conversion-step.

Resolution-Selective and Resolution-Adaptive 2 to 8-Bit Flash ADC for High-Speed Application-Independent IC (HS-AIIC)

Application-Specific ICs (ASIC) are manufactured in bulk for a long time. In this paper, an approach to High-Speed Application-Independent IC (HS-AIIC) design is discussed. A resolution-selective (RS) and resolution-adaptive (RA) 8-bit Flash ADC are designed for use in various high-speed applications. With the choice of resolution, one can work with the trade-off between speed, power consumption, and resolution for a particular application. The proposed resolution selection algorithm can be implemented for any set of resolutions for a flash ADC design. Further, an adaptive block is added to make the ADC design adaptive in nature so that we do not have to select a particular resolution manually. The proposed design entrusts on saving manufacturing cost and increases the functionality of ADC on a single chip. Proposed resolution adaptive 8-bit flash ADC design dissipates 512[Formula: see text]mW of power with an ENOB of 7.56 bits and SNDR of 46.27[Formula: see text]dB for 1[Formula: see text]GHz sampling clock pulse.

An Incremental-ΔΣ ADC With 106-dB DR for Reconfigurable Class-D Audio Amplifiers

This paper presents a hybrid ADC, by combining an incremental converter with a delta-sigma modulator (ΣM) to achieve a high-dynamic response, intended for audio applications. The circuit uses a zero + first-order incremental converter with a 4-b quantizer and a third-order ΣM. Combining the two binary outputs generates a 576-kHz 6-bit binary flow for directly driving a class-D amplifier. A 4-bit flash used in the incremental running at 1/16 the clock frequency and a one-shift DEM technique compensate for the capacitive mismatch and cancel its effect for input signals lower than -35 dBFS. The proposed ADC, fabricated in a 0.18-m CMOS process, occupies an active area of 1.2 mm and consumes 7.2 mW with a 1.8-V supply. The circuit achieves an SNR/SNDR/DR of 96.8/94.45/106 dB for a 21-kHz signal bandwidth.

An optimized design approach for 8-bit pipelined ADC using high gain amplifier

Demand of high-performance converters with integrated circuits with combined features and specifications of power consumption, resolution and speed have become very dominant in many emerging applications. Pipelined ADC mixed signal system consists of Sample and Hold, Flash ADC, DAC and Gain amplifier in all the stages. In the present work, a pipeline ADC architecture has 3-stages, with each stage of 3-bits with 3-bit flash ADC followed by a 3-bit binary weighted DAC at each stage. A novel approach to design a 8-bit ADC is implemented, and this design offers less number of comparators compared to flash ADC with less circuit complexity, and 8-bit ADC is designed with improvement in resolution. It is simulated first in MATLAB, but applying 1.8Volts sinusoidal and sampling time of 40 MSPS and clock frequency 10MHz the individual blocks are implemented in LT-spice 180 nm technology with bandwidth of 40 MHz. Then a high gain amplifier is implemented by using Diode connected load differential amplifier with 10mv input voltage and 18Mhz input frequency.

High speed area efficient 5-bit hybrid Flash ADC using spin devices and CMOS

This paper uses current induced domain wall motion in a magnetic stripe and pre-charge sense amplifiers (PCSA) to design a high speed comparator of a magnetic flash ADC. Current-induced domain-wall (DW) motion is a prominent switching mechanism promising, high-density and high-speed circuits. Domain-wall motion in a magnetic stripe based magnetic flash ADC (Analog to Digital Converter) is area efficient and faster compared to other ADCs. Our proposed 5-bit Flash ADC can operate at 500MS/s with power consumption of 10.5mW. The power consumption can be further reduced to 5.06mW by choosing a smaller step size of 10mV. By using MTJ and domain wall motion in a magnetic stripe with PCSA, SPICE compatible Verilog-A model and CMOS 45nm design kit, its performance such as power and delay have been simulated and compared with other ADCs.

Mixed-mode Method Used for Pt100 Static Transfer Function Linearization

Abstract Pt100 is a resistance temperature detector characterized by a relatively linear resistance/temperature relationship in a narrow temperature range. However, the Pt100 sensor shows a certain degree of static transfer function nonlinearity of 4.42 % in the range between −200 °C and 850 °C, which is unacceptable for some applications. As a solution to this problem, a mixed-mode linearization method based on a special dual-stage piecewise linear ADC design is proposed in this paper. The first stage of the proposed dual-stage piecewise linear ADC is performed with a low-complex and low-power flash ADC of a novel sequential design. The novelty of the proposed sequential design is reflected in the fact that the number of employed comparators is equal to the flash ADC resolution. The second stage is performed with a delta-sigma ADC with a differential input and differential reference. Using the 6-bit flash ADC of novel design and the 24-bit delta-sigma ADC, the nonlinearity error is reduced to 2.6·10−3 %, in the range between −200 °C and 850 °C. Two more ranges are examined, and the following results are obtained: in the range between 0 °C and 500 °C, the nonlinearity error is reduced from 1.99 % to 5·10−4 %, while in the range between −50 °C and 150 °C, the nonlinearity error is reduced from 0.755 % to 2.15·10−4 %.

Design of 5-bit Flash ADC Using 180 nm Technology for Medical Applications

Design of 5-bit Flash ADC Using 180 nm Technology for Medical Applications

A full input range, 1–1.8 V voltage supply scalable analog voltage comparator in 180nm CMOS

ABSTRACT A voltage supply scalable analog voltage comparator for a wide input range is presented in this paper. A digital gate-based methodology is used to design the comparator in order to extend the use of automation in the analog designs. Therefore, the proposed comparator is enormously cost-effective, reduces the time-to-market, scalable to newer technologies, and more immune to process variations than the conventional CMOS analog voltage comparators. The comparator is designed using Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) 180 nm digital CMOS technology at a supply voltage of 1.8 V. The power consumption of the proposed comparator is 160 µW approximately with total delay and offset voltage of 1.63 ns and 4.28 mV, respectively. Also, 4-bit and 5-bit flash ADC is designed as an application. The measured values of DNL/INL are ± 0.4/± 0.4 LSB and 0.42/± 0.6 LSB for 4-bit and 5-bit, respectively.

A Design of 44.1 fJ/Conv-Step 12-Bit 80 ms/s Time Interleaved Hybrid Type SAR ADC With Redundancy Capacitor and On-Chip Time-Skew Calibration

A 12-bit 80 MS/s hybrid type analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for high sampling speed and low power applications is presented in this paper. It has a subranging architecture with a front end of 6-bit Flash ADC with five channels of 6-bit time interleaved synchronous Successive Approximation Register (SAR) ADC. The proposed architecture with a shared 6-bit Flash ADC and time interleaved SAR ADC provides a power and area efficient high speed ADC. The proposed Time-skew calibration is implemented to minimize the discrepancy between the output of Flash ADC and SAR ADC’s channels. To rectify the decision error of the Flash ADC and extract the time-skew information, 1-bit redundancy is included in the CDAC of the SAR conversion. The decision error between the Flash ADC and the SAR ADC is covered with designed redundancy and the mismatch between the ADCs is covered with the time-skew calibration. To reduce the offset mismatch between Flash and SAR ADC and within SAR ADCs, all comparators are calibrated to minimize their absolute offset by utilizing background offset calibration. The modified dynamic strong ARM comparator is used for flash ADC and dynamic latched comparator is used for SAR ADCs. For fine offset calibration and low power consumption, the comparator’s offset calibration circuit is implemented. To reduce the kickback noise and enhance the overall energy efficiency for fast operation of SAR ADCs, rail-to-rail dynamic latch comparator with modified adaptive power control (APC) is implemented. The proposed ADC structure has been implemented in 130 nm CMOS process. The ADC has an effective number of bit (ENOB) of 10.97 bits while consuming 7.08 mW current consumption from the 1.2 V supply voltage.