Peak current reduction using an MTCMOS technique

In a digital circuit system, IR drop effect can be alleviated by reducing the peak current of the system. Clock skew scheduling is a popular technique for peak current reduction. In this paper, we propose two algorithms that apply a Multiple Threshold CMOS (MTCMOS) technique rather than clock skew scheduling to do peak current reduction. MTCMOS techniques are feasible to reduce peak current because different threshold cells have different cell delays and current waveforms. Experimental results show that our technique can reduce the peak current up to 47.7%. Our proposed technique can reduce not only peak current but also leakage current. Moreover, a peak current reduction algorithm using a clock skew technique or an opposite-phase clock scheme can employ our proposed technique to further reduce the peak current of a circuit.