A 3.4pJ FeRAM-enabled D flip-flop in 0.13µm CMOS for nonvolatile processing in digital systems

Nonvolatile processing-continuously operating a digital circuit and retaining state through frequent power interruptions-creates new applications for portable electronics operating from harvested energy [1] and high-performance systems managing power by operating “normally off” [2]. To enable these scenarios, energy processing must happen in parallel with information processing. This work makes the following contributions: 1) the design of a nonvolatile D flip-flop (NVDFF) with embedded ferroelectric capacitors (fecaps) that senses data robustly and avoids race conditions; 2) the integration of the NVDFF into the ASIC design flow with a power management unit (PMU) and a simple one-bit interface to brown-out detection circuitry; and 3) a characterization of the NVDFF statistical signal margin and the energy cost of retaining data.