Ultra-Low Power Processor Operates at Near-Threshold Voltage

At this week’s International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC 2013), Holst Centre and imec presented an ultra-low power processor that operates reliably at near-threshold voltages. The processor delivers clock speeds up to 1MHz at voltages down to 0.4 V. In tests based on a Fast Fourier Transform use case, it consumed only 79 µW – a fraction of the power consumption at standard voltages.

“Energy-efficient data processing will be vital for a wide range of emerging applications from Body Area Networks to building automation and equipment monitoring. Reducing active power consumption and standby leakage are thus increasingly important considerations for digital design,” said Harmke de Groot, program director at Holst Centre/imec. “Yet much of the industry’s research is still aimed at improving performance rather than increasing battery lifetime by higher energy efficiency. At Holst Centre, we focus on low power and low voltage to enable battery-powered and energy scavenging smart devices.”

The new energy-efficient processor platform is customized for biomedical applications such as ECG and EEG monitoring. This was realized by creating an interface architecture around a general-purpose processor core to enable ultra-low voltage operation and automatic scaling of performance to improve energy efficiency, plus in-situ monitoring to guarantee reliability and high yield.