Comparison of low-voltage scaling in synchronous and asynchronous FD-SOI circuits

Today's battery powered devices motivate the scaling to reduced operation voltages on integrated systems. Low-voltage circuits are however more sensitive to process and temperature variations. This paper presents and compares the minimum voltages that allow reliable operations of synchronous and asynchronous case-study circuits in FD-SOI 28-nm technology. Results show that an asynchronous 8-bit arithmetic logic unit is able to operate under 0.4 V by performing equivalent data throughput and less power consumption than its synchronous counterpart.