BCB Evaluation of High-Performance and Low-Leakage Three-Independent-Gate Field-Effect Transistors

Three-independent-gate field-effect transistors (TIGFETs) are a promising next-generation device technology. Their controllable-polarity capability allows for superior design of arithmetic and sequential logic gates. In this paper, the TIGFET technology has been benchmarked against several beyond-CMOS devices. The benchmarking techniques followed a similar approach used by the Nanoelectronic Research Initiative Group. The performance of the 32-bit adder and the 32-bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU) was investigated using the advanced 15-nm technology node. The TIGFET devices were shown to achieve the best energy-delay product (EDP) compared with all other beyond-CMOS devices for the 32-bit adder and competitive EDP for the 32-bit ALU. In particular, TIGFETs have 3.83 times and 1.54 times lower EDP than CMOS high-performance (HP) for the 32-bit adder and the 32-bit ALU, respectively. In addition, TIGFETs were shown to have a similar throughput for the 32-bit ALU compared with CMOS HP. Finally, due to TIGFETs’ ultralow leakage current and unique circuit designs, our results show that the standby energy of the 32-bit adder decreased by two orders of magnitude compared with CMOS HP and a decrease of at least one order of magnitude compared with CMOS low-voltage.