A Robust and Energy Efficient Pulse-Triggered Flip-Flop Design for Ultra Low Voltage Operations

Bernard, Sébastien [CEA-LETI, MINATEC, Grenoble/France] Valentian, Alexandre [CEA-LETI, MINATEC, Grenoble/France] Bol, David [UCL] Legat, Jean-Didier [UCL] Belleville, Marc [CEA-LETI, MINATEC, Grenoble/France]

In this paper, a robust and energy efficient pulse-triggered flip–flop (pulsed-FF) architecture dedicated to ultra-low voltage (ULV) operations is proposed. The main innovation lays in the architecture of the pulse generator (PG) of the pulsed-FF. It allows designers to reach a robust pulsed-FF architecture without dramatic area and energy penalty. In addition, it still provides degree of freedoms to reach the best tradeoff between robustness and energy, depending on the application. Post-layout simulations proved that, for a small area penalty, the robustness of the pulsed-FF is greatly improved. In addition to that, the shareable property of the PG of pulsed-FFs at ultra-low voltage is studied in an energy point of view. It is shown that for eight or more latches sharing one PG, the energy consumption and area per flip–flop is lower than a conventional master–slave architecture.