Level Converter Circuit for Low Voltage Digital LSIs
Details
Supply voltage scaling in accordance with device scaling has achieved low power dissipation of CMOS LSIs. Because each circuit block in an LSI requires suitable supply voltages, the large voltage gap between each circuit block makes it hard to convert signals between circuit blocks. Therefore, a level converter to solve this problem is a key component for low-voltage LSIs. In this paper, a level converter tolerant to large suply-voltages-gap has been deveolped in a 0.35-μm CMOS process. It can achieve low power operation because it dissipates supply current only when the input signal changes. Measurement results showed that the level converter transformed sinals of 0.4V to 3V.
