IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2015 - 29

Prof. Sansen included an overview of new applications, followed
by descriptions of their limitations,
such as noise and distortion, and a
number of low-voltage amplifiers/filters configurations, including analogto-digital converters.
Before visiting SSCS-South Brazil,
Prof. Sansen had given a three-day
course on power minimization in

high-speed analog ICs at the Advanced
Research Center of Wernher von
Braun, in Campinas, Brazil. The main
attendees at that event, which grew
the quality of human resources quality in analog design worldwide, were
designers from Design Centers of the
IC-Brazil Special Government Program.
We are thankful to Prof. Sansen
for his willingness to come to Brazil.

We also wish to thank the IEEE SSCS
Chapters program for supporting
regional Chapter activities like our
conference in August that enhance
the technical level around the world.

-Wilhelmus Van Noije
Chair IEEE SSCS Chapter-São Paulo, Brazil

SSCS-Singapore Stages a Short Course on Energy-Efficient
IC Design by IEEE Fellow Dennis Sylvester

At the invitation of IEEE Solid-State
Circuits Society (SSCS) Chapter SSCSSingapore, Prof. Dennis Sylvester
of the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, presented a short course,
"Energy Efficient IC Design: Basics to
State of Art" last summer, on 24-25
July, at the Nanyang Technological
University. Attended by 41 participants from industry, research, and
tertiary institutes, the two-day event
focused on techniques to improve
energy efficiency in modern ICs.
Over the course of two days, Prof.
Sylvester provided a complete view
of state-of-the-art, energy-efficient
IC design techniques in digital
logic, memory, analog/mixed-signal

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2014.2369336
Date of publication: 11 February 2015

circuit designs with practical design
examples from recent literature.
He began by reviewing low-power
design basics, including sources of
power consumption, technology
trends, and characteristics of target
applications areas, to highlight the
fact that energy-efficiency design
is the most challenging design metric in both ultra-low-power applications and high-performance mobile
platforms.
Reviewing conventional low-power
design, Prof. Sylvester targeted dynamic power-reduction techniques, such as
device sizing, dual-Vth and dual-Vdd
operations, and pipeline/parallel architectures. Remarking on advanced lowpower design, he explored techniques
that reduce static power, including
power gating, body biasing, and transistor stacking.

Moving on, he surveyed advanced
adaptive design techniques, such as
table-based tuning, canary circuit,
and in-situ monitoring, and illustrated
how to achieve energy efficiency and
robust operation by adapting to workload, process, and environment variation. In conclusion, he said aggressive
voltage scaling is a core design technique for the most energy-efficient
designs, and near-threshold operation
has been proven as the most effective
way to achieve energy efficiency.
Prof. Sylvester's second-day topics
included sub-threshold/near-threshold
design techniques and design examples
offering near-threshold computing as a
promising solution to achieve energy
efficiency yet satisfying performance
and robustness. His talk also explored
low-power memory design, focusing
on SRAM power breakdown, voltage

prof. Dennis sylvester, of the University of Michigan (back row, screen center), with members and guests of sscs-singapore in July. Front row
from left: Yu Guolei, toh Lian hock, cheng heng Wee, Yong Boon Loong, Ng Kian ann, Ferrara Giovanni, Liter siek, Go thanh trung, Yvonne
Lam (chapter chair), tan hai su, Nithin salguran, Lee Kah Weng, Wang Bo, Mini Jayakrishnan, and ricky chow.

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

W i n t e r 2 0 15

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine - Winter 2015