In Chapter 2 the basic idea of Ultra-Low-Power CMOS is introduced and several fundamental investigations regarding its limitations, technological options, and prospects are laid down. Chapter 3 explains the interrelations between technology and circuit performance and describes a new method for performance estimation of VLSI circuits developed in this work. Chapter 4 points out some critical problems associated with circuit simulation at very low supply voltages and describes a new device model, which was developed in this work for low-voltage circuit simulation. Another important aspect, the feasibility of analog and mixed analog digital components, which are compatible with Ultra-Low-Power digital technologies, is investigated in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 presents results from a large simulation experiment in which constrained optimizations of deep-sub-micron according to various different optimization criteria were carried out in order to determine the achievable performance of MOSFETs with constant channel doping and to analyze the impact of particular optimization criteria. The essential conclusions from this work as well as future directions of development, especially, with respect to high-performance computing are summarized in Chapter 7.
Following the main chapters the appendices contain introductory information on VLSI technology (Appendix A) and sigma-delta analog-digital conversion (Appendix B), the technical details of the off-current based scaling approach used in this work (Appendix C), a discussion of energy recovering methods, an alternative to low-voltage Ultra-Low-Power technology (Appendix D), and a critical review of the threshold voltage and its practical use.