2009/04/08 by Sherif Abdulkader Tawfik, S.A. Tawfik, V. Kursun +1
Engineering · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuit Design #Low-power high-performance VLSI design
paper · doi:10.1109/tvlsi.2008.2006793
openalex publication_date 2009/04/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Employing multiple supply voltages (multi- VDD) is an effective technique for reducing the power consumption without sacrificing speed in an integrated circuit (IC). In order to transfer signals among the circuits operating at different voltage levels specialized voltage interface circuits are required. Two novel multi-threshold voltage (multi-Vth) level converters are proposed in this paper. The new multi-Vthlevel converters are compared with the previously published circuits for operation at different supply voltages. When the circuits are individually optimized for minimum power consumption, the proposed level converters offer significant power savings of up to 70% as compared to the previously published circuits. Alternatively, when the circuits are individually optimized for minimum propagation delay, the speed is enhanced by up to 78% with the proposed voltage interface circuits in a 0.18- mum TSMC CMOS technology.