A 70µW/MHz ultra-low voltage microcontroller SPARK

In a battery-powered device, power consumption determines the operation time and weight of the overall system. In this paper, a 10 MHz ultra-low voltage SPARK 32-bit RISC microcontroller is proposed, with low power consumption which prolongs operation time and satisfies low end applications in the meantime. The design is carried out with the TSMC 65nm LP CMOS process, and post-layout simulation indicates the SPARK microcontroller is capable of operating at 10MHz, and consuming 0.7 mW from a 0.45V supply. The overall chip layout area is 920×920 µm
²
.