Tecnologias submicrônicas (DSM) têm inserido novos desafios ao projeto de circuitos devido a redução de geometrias, redução na tensão de alimentação, aumento da freqüência e aumento da densidade de lógica. Estas características reduzem significativamente a confiabilidade dos circuitos integrados devido a suscetibilidade a efeitos como crosstalk e acoplamento de substrato. Ainda, os efeitos da radiação são mais significantes devido as partículas com baixa energia começam a ser um problema em tecnologias DSM. Todas essas características enfatizam a necessidade de novas ferramentas de automação. Um dos objetivos desta tese é desenvolver novas ferramentas aptas a lidar com estes desafios. Esta tese é dividida em duas grandes contribuições. A primeira está relacionada com o desenvolvimento de uma nova metodologia com o objetivo de gerar circuitos otimizados em respeito ao atraso e ao consumo de potência. Um novo fluxo de projeto é apresentado na qual o circuito é otimizado no nível de transistor. Esta metodologia permite otimizar cada transistor de acordo com as capacitâncias associadas. Diferente da metodologia tradicional, o leiaute é gerado sob demanda depois do processo de otimização de transistores. Resultados mostram melhora de 11% em relação ao atraso dos circuitos e 30% de redução no consumo de potência em comparação à metodologia tradicional. A segunda contribuição está relacionada com o desenvolvimento de técnicas de geração de circuitos tolerantes a radiação. Uma técnica CWSP é usada para aplicar redundância temporal em elementos seqüenciais. Esta técnica apresenta baixa utilização de área, mas as penalidades no atraso estão totalmente relacionadas com a duração do pulso que se planeja atenuar. Além disso, uma nova metodologia de dimensionamento de transistores para falhas transientes é apresentada. A metodologia de dimensionamento é baseada em um modelo analítico. O modelo considera independente blocos de transistores PMOS e NMOS. Então, somente transistores diretamente relacionados à atenuação são dimensionados. Resultados mostram área, atraso e consumo de potência reduzido em comparação com as técnicas CWSP e TMR, permitindo o desenvolvimento de circuitos com alta freqüência. / Deep submicron (DSM) technologies have increased the challenges in circuit designs due to geometry shrinking, power supply reduction, frequency increasing and high logic density. The reliability of integrated circuits is significantly reduced as a consequence of the susceptibility to crosstalk and substrate coupling. In addition, radiation effects are also more significant because particles with low energy, without importance in older technologies, start to be a problem in DSM technologies. All these characteristics emphasize the need for new Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools. One of the goals of this thesis is to develop EDA tools able to cope with these DSM challenges. This thesis is divided in two major contributions. The first contribution is related to the development of a new methodology able to generate optimized circuits in respect to timing and power consumption. A new design flow is proposed in which the circuit is optimized at transistor level. This methodology allows the optimization of every single transistor according to the capacitances associated to it. Different from the traditional standard cell approach, the layout is generated on demand after a transistor level optimization process. Results show an average 11% delay improvement and more than 30% power saving in comparison with the traditional design flow. The second contribution of this thesis is related with the development of techniques for radiation-hardened circuits. The Code Word State Preserving (CWSP) technique is used to apply timing redundancy into latches and flipflops. This technique presents low area overhead, but timing penalties are totally related with the glitch duration is being attenuated. Further, a new transistor sizing methodology for Single Event Transient (SET) attenuation is proposed. The sizing method is based on an analytic model. The model considers independently pull-up and pull-down blocks. Thus, only transistors directly related to the SET attenuation are sized. Results show smaller area, timing and power consumption overhead in comparison with TMR and CWSP techniques allowing the development of high frequency circuits, with lower area and power overhead.

Over the last four decades the integrated circuit industry has evolved in a tremendous pace. This success has been driven by the scaling of device sizes leading to higher and higher integration capability, which have enabled more functionality and higher performance. The impressive evolution of modern high-performance microprocessors have resulted in chips with over a billion transistors as well as multi-GHz clock frequencies. As the silicon integrated circuit industry moves further into the nanometer regime, scaling of device sizes is still predicted to continue at least into the near future. However, there are a number of challenges to overcome to be able to continue the increase of integration at the same pace. Three of the major challenges are increasing power dissipation due to clocking of synchronous circuit, increasing leakage currents causing growing static power dissipation and reduced circuit robustness, and finally increasing spread in circuit parameters due to physical limitations in the manufacturing process. This thesis presents a number of circuit techniques that aims to help in all three of the mentioned challenges.Power dissipation related to the clock generation and distribution is identified as the dominating contributor of the total active power dissipation for multi-GHz systems. As the complexity and size of synchronous systems continues to increase, clock power will also increase. This makes novel power reduction techniques absolutely crucial in future VLSI design. In this thesis an energy recovering clocking technique aimed at reducing the total chip clock power is presented. Based on theoretical analysis the technique is shown to enable considerable clock power savings. Moreover, the impact of the proposed technique on conventional flip-flop topologies is studied. Measurements on an experimental chip design proves the technique, and shows more than 56% lower clock power compared to conventional clock distribution techniques at clock frequencies up to 1.76 GHz.Static leakage power dissipation is a considerable contributor to the total power dissipation. This power is dissipated even for circuits that are idle and not contributing to the operation. Hence, with increasing number of transistors on each chip, circuit techniques which reduce the static leakage currents are necessary. In this thesis a technique is discussed which reduces the static leakage current in a microcode ROM resulting in 30% reduction of the leakage power with no area or performance penalty.Apart from increasing static power dissipation the increasing leakage currents also impact the robustness constraints of the circuits. This is important for regenerative circuits like flip-flops and latches where a changed state due to leakage will lead to loss of functionality. This is a serious issue especially for high-performance dynamic circuits, which are attractive in order to limit the clock load in the design. However, with the increasing leakage the robustness of dynamic circuits reduces dramatically. To improve the leakage robustness for sub-90 nm low clock load dynamic flip-flops, a novel keeper technique is proposed. The proposed keeper utilizes a scalable and simple leakage compensation technique, which is implemented on a reconfigurable flip-flop. At normal clock frequencies the flip-flop is configured in dynamic mode, and reduces the clock power by 25% due to the lower clock load. During any low-frequency operation, the flip-flop is configured as a static flip-flop retaining full functional robustness.As scaling continues further towards the fundamental atomistic limits, several challenges arise for continuing industrial device integration. Large inaccuracies in lithography process, impurities in manufacturing, and reduced control of dopant levels during implantation all cause increasing statistical spread of performance, power, and robustness of the devices. In order to compensate the impact of the increasingly large process variations on latches and flip-flops, a reconfigurable keeper technique is presented in this thesis. In contrast to the traditional design for worst-case process corners, a variable keeper circuit is utilized. The proposed reconfigurable keeper preserves the robustness of storage nodes across the process corners without degrading the overall chip performance.

Tecnologias submicrônicas (DSM) têm inserido novos desafios ao projeto de circuitos devido a redução de geometrias, redução na tensão de alimentação, aumento da freqüência e aumento da densidade de lógica. Estas características reduzem significativamente a confiabilidade dos circuitos integrados devido a suscetibilidade a efeitos como crosstalk e acoplamento de substrato. Ainda, os efeitos da radiação são mais significantes devido as partículas com baixa energia começam a ser um problema em tecnologias DSM. Todas essas características enfatizam a necessidade de novas ferramentas de automação. Um dos objetivos desta tese é desenvolver novas ferramentas aptas a lidar com estes desafios. Esta tese é dividida em duas grandes contribuições. A primeira está relacionada com o desenvolvimento de uma nova metodologia com o objetivo de gerar circuitos otimizados em respeito ao atraso e ao consumo de potência. Um novo fluxo de projeto é apresentado na qual o circuito é otimizado no nível de transistor. Esta metodologia permite otimizar cada transistor de acordo com as capacitâncias associadas. Diferente da metodologia tradicional, o leiaute é gerado sob demanda depois do processo de otimização de transistores. Resultados mostram melhora de 11% em relação ao atraso dos circuitos e 30% de redução no consumo de potência em comparação à metodologia tradicional. A segunda contribuição está relacionada com o desenvolvimento de técnicas de geração de circuitos tolerantes a radiação. Uma técnica CWSP é usada para aplicar redundância temporal em elementos seqüenciais. Esta técnica apresenta baixa utilização de área, mas as penalidades no atraso estão totalmente relacionadas com a duração do pulso que se planeja atenuar. Além disso, uma nova metodologia de dimensionamento de transistores para falhas transientes é apresentada. A metodologia de dimensionamento é baseada em um modelo analítico. O modelo considera independente blocos de transistores PMOS e NMOS. Então, somente transistores diretamente relacionados à atenuação são dimensionados. Resultados mostram área, atraso e consumo de potência reduzido em comparação com as técnicas CWSP e TMR, permitindo o desenvolvimento de circuitos com alta freqüência. / Deep submicron (DSM) technologies have increased the challenges in circuit designs due to geometry shrinking, power supply reduction, frequency increasing and high logic density. The reliability of integrated circuits is significantly reduced as a consequence of the susceptibility to crosstalk and substrate coupling. In addition, radiation effects are also more significant because particles with low energy, without importance in older technologies, start to be a problem in DSM technologies. All these characteristics emphasize the need for new Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools. One of the goals of this thesis is to develop EDA tools able to cope with these DSM challenges. This thesis is divided in two major contributions. The first contribution is related to the development of a new methodology able to generate optimized circuits in respect to timing and power consumption. A new design flow is proposed in which the circuit is optimized at transistor level. This methodology allows the optimization of every single transistor according to the capacitances associated to it. Different from the traditional standard cell approach, the layout is generated on demand after a transistor level optimization process. Results show an average 11% delay improvement and more than 30% power saving in comparison with the traditional design flow. The second contribution of this thesis is related with the development of techniques for radiation-hardened circuits. The Code Word State Preserving (CWSP) technique is used to apply timing redundancy into latches and flipflops. This technique presents low area overhead, but timing penalties are totally related with the glitch duration is being attenuated. Further, a new transistor sizing methodology for Single Event Transient (SET) attenuation is proposed. The sizing method is based on an analytic model. The model considers independently pull-up and pull-down blocks. Thus, only transistors directly related to the SET attenuation are sized. Results show smaller area, timing and power consumption overhead in comparison with TMR and CWSP techniques allowing the development of high frequency circuits, with lower area and power overhead.

Tecnologias submicrônicas (DSM) têm inserido novos desafios ao projeto de circuitos devido a redução de geometrias, redução na tensão de alimentação, aumento da freqüência e aumento da densidade de lógica. Estas características reduzem significativamente a confiabilidade dos circuitos integrados devido a suscetibilidade a efeitos como crosstalk e acoplamento de substrato. Ainda, os efeitos da radiação são mais significantes devido as partículas com baixa energia começam a ser um problema em tecnologias DSM. Todas essas características enfatizam a necessidade de novas ferramentas de automação. Um dos objetivos desta tese é desenvolver novas ferramentas aptas a lidar com estes desafios. Esta tese é dividida em duas grandes contribuições. A primeira está relacionada com o desenvolvimento de uma nova metodologia com o objetivo de gerar circuitos otimizados em respeito ao atraso e ao consumo de potência. Um novo fluxo de projeto é apresentado na qual o circuito é otimizado no nível de transistor. Esta metodologia permite otimizar cada transistor de acordo com as capacitâncias associadas. Diferente da metodologia tradicional, o leiaute é gerado sob demanda depois do processo de otimização de transistores. Resultados mostram melhora de 11% em relação ao atraso dos circuitos e 30% de redução no consumo de potência em comparação à metodologia tradicional. A segunda contribuição está relacionada com o desenvolvimento de técnicas de geração de circuitos tolerantes a radiação. Uma técnica CWSP é usada para aplicar redundância temporal em elementos seqüenciais. Esta técnica apresenta baixa utilização de área, mas as penalidades no atraso estão totalmente relacionadas com a duração do pulso que se planeja atenuar. Além disso, uma nova metodologia de dimensionamento de transistores para falhas transientes é apresentada. A metodologia de dimensionamento é baseada em um modelo analítico. O modelo considera independente blocos de transistores PMOS e NMOS. Então, somente transistores diretamente relacionados à atenuação são dimensionados. Resultados mostram área, atraso e consumo de potência reduzido em comparação com as técnicas CWSP e TMR, permitindo o desenvolvimento de circuitos com alta freqüência. / Deep submicron (DSM) technologies have increased the challenges in circuit designs due to geometry shrinking, power supply reduction, frequency increasing and high logic density. The reliability of integrated circuits is significantly reduced as a consequence of the susceptibility to crosstalk and substrate coupling. In addition, radiation effects are also more significant because particles with low energy, without importance in older technologies, start to be a problem in DSM technologies. All these characteristics emphasize the need for new Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools. One of the goals of this thesis is to develop EDA tools able to cope with these DSM challenges. This thesis is divided in two major contributions. The first contribution is related to the development of a new methodology able to generate optimized circuits in respect to timing and power consumption. A new design flow is proposed in which the circuit is optimized at transistor level. This methodology allows the optimization of every single transistor according to the capacitances associated to it. Different from the traditional standard cell approach, the layout is generated on demand after a transistor level optimization process. Results show an average 11% delay improvement and more than 30% power saving in comparison with the traditional design flow. The second contribution of this thesis is related with the development of techniques for radiation-hardened circuits. The Code Word State Preserving (CWSP) technique is used to apply timing redundancy into latches and flipflops. This technique presents low area overhead, but timing penalties are totally related with the glitch duration is being attenuated. Further, a new transistor sizing methodology for Single Event Transient (SET) attenuation is proposed. The sizing method is based on an analytic model. The model considers independently pull-up and pull-down blocks. Thus, only transistors directly related to the SET attenuation are sized. Results show smaller area, timing and power consumption overhead in comparison with TMR and CWSP techniques allowing the development of high frequency circuits, with lower area and power overhead.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第20377号 / 工博第4314号 / 新制||工||1668(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院工学研究科電気工学専攻 / (主査)教授 篠原 真毅, 教授 和田 修己, 教授 大村 善治 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a multibillion and a multinational science project to build the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. For a very large field of view, the combined collecting area would be one square kilometre (or 1, 000, 000 square metre) and spread over more than 3,000 km wide which will require a massive count of antennas (thousands). Each of the antennas contains hundreds of low noise amplifier (LNA) circuits. The antenna arrays are divided into low, medium and high operational frequencies and located at different positions to boost up the telescope’s scanning sensitivity.The objective of this work was to develop and fabricate fully on-chip LNA circuits to meet the stringent requirements for the mid-frequency array from 0.4 GHz to 1.4 GHz of the SKA radio astronomy telescope using Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit technology (MMIC). Due to the number of LNA reaching figures of millions, the fabricated circuits were designed with the consideration for low cost fabrication and high reliability in the receiver chain. Therefore, a relaxed optical lithography with Lg = 1 µm was adopted for a high yield fabrication process.Towards the fulfilment of the device’s low noise characteristics, a large number of device designs, fabrication and characterisation of InGaAs/InAlAs/InP pHEMTs were undertaken. These include optimisations at each critical fabrication steps. The device’s high breakdown and very low gate leakage characteristics were further improved by a combination of judicious epitaxial growth and manipulation of materials’ energy gaps. An attempt to increase the device breakdown voltage was also employed by incorporating Field Plate structure at the gate terminal. This yielded the devices with improvements in the breakdown voltage up to 15 V and very low gate leakage of 1 µA/mm, in addition to high transconductance (gm) characteristic. Fully integrated double stage LNA had measured NF varying from 1.2 dB to 1.6 dB from 0.4 GHz to 1.4 GHz, compared with a slightly lower NF obtained from simulation (0.8 dB to 1.1 dB) across the same frequency band.These are amongst the attractive device properties for the implementation of a fully on-chip MMIC LNA circuits demonstrated in this work. The lower circuit’s low noise characteristic has been demonstrated using large gate width geometry pHEMTs, where the system’s noise resistance (Rn) has successfully reduced to a few ohms. The work reported here should facilitate the successful implementation of rugged low noise amplifiers as required by SKA receivers.