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e-Article

Nonvolatile Storage Cells Using FiCC for IoT Processors with Intermittent Operations
Document Type
Journal Article
Source
IEICE Transactions on Electronics. :2022
Subject
Energy harvesting
Flip-Flops
Internet of Things (IoT)
Metal fringe capacitor
Nonvolatile processor (NVP)
Standard Cell Memory (SCM)
Language
English
ISSN
0916-8524
1745-1353
Abstract
Energy harvesting has been widely investigated as a potential solution to supply power for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Computing devices must operate intermittently rather than continuously, because harvested energy is unstable and some of IoT applications can be periodic. Therefore, processors for IoT devices with intermittent operation must feature a hibernation mode with zero-standby-power in addition to energy-efficient normal mode. In this paper, we describe the layout design and measurement results of a nonvolatile standard cell memory (NV-SCM) and nonvolatile flip-flops (NV-FF) with a nonvolatile memory using Fishbone-in-Cage Capacitor (FiCC) suitable for IoT processors with intermittent operations. They can be fabricated in any conventional CMOS process without any additional mask. NV-SCM and NV-FF are fabricated in a 180 nm CMOS process technology. The area overhead by nonvolatility of a bit cell are 74% in NV-SCM and 29% in NV-FF, respectively. We confirmed full functionality of the NV-SCM and NV-FF. The nonvolatile system using proposed NV-SCM and NV-FF can reduce the energy consumption by 24.3% compared to the volatile system when hibernation/normal operation time ratio is 500 as shown in the simulation.