Static Power Reduction Techniques for Asynchronous Circuits

Abstract

Power gating techniques are effective in mitigating leakage losses, which represent a significant portion of power consumption in nanoscale circuits. We examine variants of two representative techniques, Cut-Off and Zig-Zag Cut-Off, and find that they offer an average of 80% and 20% in power savings, respectively, for asynchronous circuit families. We also present a new zero-delay (ZDRTO) wakeup technique for power gated asynchronous pipelines, which leverages the robustness of asynchronous circuits to delays and supply voltage variations. Our ZDRTO technique offers a tradeoff between wakeup time and static power reduction, making it suitable for power gating pipelines with low-duty cycle, bursty usage patterns.