According to Semiwise, the IoT has stringent requirements for ultra low static and dynamic power in order to enable ‘fit and forget’ installation. The company also says that low chip costs will be a essential for broad range of IoT applications and this will focus attention on lower cost technologies such as 40nm and 28nm bulk CMOS. But, says Semiwise’s founder Asen Asenov, pictured, there are no viable conventional (bulk) CMOS solutions that meet the IoT’s low power and high reliability requirements.
He says Semiwise has developed low power variability resistant bulk CMOS transistor technology that meets IoT requirements ‘in full’. The FFT can be scaled beyond 20nm bulk CMOS and, when applied to 20nm bulk CMOS, it is 30% faster and has a leakage current two orders of magnitude lower than its bulk counterpart at the equivalent drive current.
Importantly, Asenov asserts, the transistor has an extremely low local (purely statistical) variability, suiting it to near threshold and subthreshold logic and SRAM design.
According to Asenov: “While the concept of variability resistant transistors has been around for a few years, despite significant VC investments, many companies have failed to commercialise the technology due to a lack of understanding of statistical variability and adequate simulations capabilities.”