Sub-500-ps 64-b ALUs in 0.18-μm SOI/bulk CMOS: design and scaling trends

In this paper, we present: 1) design of a single-rail energy-efficient 64-b Han-Carlson ALU, operating at 482 ps in 1.5 V, 0.18-/spl mu/m bulk CMOS; 2) direct port of this ALU to 0.18-/spl mu/m partially depleted SOI process; 3) SOI-optimal redesign of the ALU using a novel deep-stack quaternary-tree architecture; 4) margining for max-delay pushout due to reverse body bias in SOI designs; and 5) performance scaling trends of the ALU designs in 0.13-/spl mu/m generation. We show that a direct port of the Han-Carlson ALU to 0.18-/spl mu/m SOI offers 14% performance improvement after margining. A redesign of the ALU, using an SOI-favored deep-stack architecture improves the margined speedup to 19%. A 10% margin was required for the SOI designs, to account for reverse body-bias-induced max-delay pushout. Preconditioning the intermediate stack nodes in the dynamic ALU designs reduced this margin to 2%. Scaling the ALUs to 0.13-/spl mu/m generation reduces the overall SOI speedup for both architectures to 9% and 16%, respectively, confirming the trend that speedup offered by SOI technology decreases with scaling.