Why area might reduce power in nanoscale CMOS

In this paper we explore the relationship between power and area. By exploiting parallelism (and thus using more area) one can reduce the switching frequency allowing a reduction in V/sub DD/ which results in a reduction in power. Under a scaling regime which allows threshold voltage to increase as V/sub DD/ decreases we find that dynamic and subthreshold power loss in CMOS exhibit a dependence on area proportional to A/sup (/spl sigma/-3)//spl sigma// while gate leakage power /spl prop/ A/sup (/spl sigma/-6)//spl sigma//, and short circuit power /spl prop/ A/sup (/spl sigma/-8)//spl sigma//. Thus, with the large number of devices at our disposal we can exploit techniques such as spatial computing, tailoring the program directly to the hardware, to overcome the negative effects of scaling. The value of /spl sigma/ describes the effectiveness of the technique for a particular circuit and/or algorithm - for circuits that exhibit a value of /spl sigma/ /spl les/3, power will be a constant or reducing function of area. We briefly speculate on how /spl sigma/ might be influenced by a move to nanoscale technology.