Dynamic threshold voltage control for dual supply voltage scheme on PD-SOI

Abstract

The dual supply voltage (dual-V_DD) scheme reduces the active power consumption without performance degradation by using two power supply rails. However, an increase in the delay due to the scaled-down supply voltage has made assigning the lower supply voltage (V_DDL) more difficult in the conventional dual-V_DD scheme. We propose a technique for the dual-V_DD scheme employing the Active Body-biasing Control (ABC) on PD-SOI, which increases the number of V_DDL-cells owing to lowered threshold voltage. Simulation results have shown our approach effectively reduces the power consumption even at low voltage operation.