ABSTRACT
Typical Internet of Things devices record data in remote locations with various types of sensors and relay this information to the cloud, where it is stored, analyzed, and combined with the information of other sensors. This chapter reviews of ideas for energy-efficient low-power VLSI design, and focuses on logic and on ultra-low-power embedded memories. Variations in the manufacturing process have the longest time scale, since they lead to differences between individual manufactured circuits, but their impact remains constant for each manufactured circuit after production. The chapter introduces the basics of power and energy consumption in digital integrated circuits and reviews voltage-scaling as the pre-dominant design approach to achieve energy-efficient low-power integrated circuits. It focuses on the issue of realizing embedded SRAM memories, which often constitute the major source of leakage and are the first point-of-failure at scaled voltages. Leakage currents lead to static power consumption which decreases linearly with the supply voltage for the entire duration of the clock period.
