Approaches to run-time and standby mode leakage reduction in global buses

Abstract

In this paper, we present various design approaches to leakage minimization in global repeaters. We demonstrate the applicability of the MTCMOS scheme to global repeaters for leakage reduction. We then analyze two design approaches called Duplicated Skewed Buses and Skewed Pulsed Buses. We show that significant reduction in standby leakage power can be obtained using these approaches while providing significant improvements in performance. We also illustrate the use of these proposed techniques with the MTCMOS approach to obtain further savings in leakage power. Simulations results in a 90nm process show that skewed pulsed buses with MTCMOS can provide 20% improvement in performance with over 25% reduction in active mode leakage and nearly 100X reduction in standby mode leakage.