2014 Volume 83 Issue 10 Pages 808-815
The Internet of Things era is considered to be the next boost for LSI applications. A large number of things, which have never been connected to the Internet before, will be connected to it by LSIs equipped with a sensor, CPU, memory, and wireless communication device. These LSI devices are not connected to a power line, so they must survive by using a battery or energy generated by energy harvesting. Therefore, low-power device operation is required, and a supply voltage reduction is the most important issue for low-power operation. The Low-power Electronics Association & Project, which was founded in 2010, has been developing new devices such as an FD-SOI CMOS (named SOTB), Atom Switch, MRAM, and PCM as candidates for replacing conventional power-stricken devices. In the article, recent achievements of LEAP are introduced, focusing on the performance of several experimental LSIs made by using LEAP’s new devices.
