학술논문

SE Performance of D-FF Designs With Different VT Options at Near-Threshold Supply Voltages in 7-nm Bulk FinFET Technology
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on. 69(7):1582-1586 Jul, 2022
Subject
Nuclear Engineering
Bioengineering
Transistors
Integrated circuits
Power demand
FinFETs
Threshold voltage
Delays
Standards
Alpha particles
critical charge
cross section
FinFETS
flip-flops
V<%2Fitalic>T%29%22">near-threshold voltage (VT)
radiation effects
single-event (SE) upset
supply voltage
Language
ISSN
0018-9499
1558-1578
Abstract
Power consumption for integrated circuits (ICs) fabricated at advanced technology nodes is a primary concern for application-specific IC (ASIC) designers. To reduce power consumption, designers use transistors with different threshold voltage ( $V_{\mathrm {T}}$ ) options and may reduce the supply voltage, oftentimes to as low as transistor-threshold-voltage levels. This work investigates the effects of these two popular techniques, different $V_{\mathrm {T}}$ options, and near-threshold-voltage (NTV) operation on the single-event (SE) performance of conventional D flip-flop (D-FF) cells in low-power applications. Results indicate that at near NTV levels, the SE cross section increases by two orders of magnitude, and the low $V_{\mathrm {T}}$ (LVT) option yields the best SE performance in comparison to the standard $V_{\mathrm {T}}$ (SVT) and ultralow $V_{\mathrm {T}}$ (uLVT) options.