Monotonic transition based forward body bias for dual threshold voltage low power embedded processors

Abstract. Dual threshold voltage and forward body bias techniques are effective ways to optimally balance the standby leakage power and performance. In this paper, we propose a novel fine-grained forward body biasing scheme for monotonic static logic circuits. In the proposed scheme, the forward body bias is applied to high threshold voltage of either the pull-up or the pull-down network based on the evaluation transition and the state of operation. This technique improves the low skew NAND and NOR circuit performance by 7% and 11%, high skew NAND and NOR by 8% and 13% respectively. It reduces both active and standby leakage power as compared to monotonic static CMOS with dual-VT technique. The simulations are carried out using 130 nm mixed mode process technology to validate our proposed technique.