Towards An Ultra-Low-Power Architecture Using Single-Electron Tunneling Transistors

Minimizing power consumption is vitally important in embedded system design; power consumption determines battery lifespan. Ultralow-power designs may even permit embedded systems to operate without batteries, e.g., by scavenging energy from the environment. Moreover, managing power dissipation is now a key factor in integrated circuit packaging and cooling. As a result, embedded system price, size, weight, and reliability are all strongly dependent on power dissipation. Recent developments in nanoscale devices open new alternatives for low-power embedded system design. Among these, single-electron tunneling transistors (SETs) hold the promise of achieving the lowest power consumption. However, SETs impose unique design constraints that strongly influence architectural and circuit-level decisions. Unfortunately, most analysis of SETs has focused on single devices instead of architectures, making it difficult to determine whether they are appropriate for low-power embedded systems. Thi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Changyun Zhu, Zhenyu (Peter) Gu, Li Shang, Robert P. Dick, Robert G. Knobel
• Keywords: DAC 2007, Design Automation, Lowest Power Consumption, Power Consumption, Power Consumption Determines