Power and Aging Characterization of Digital FIR Filters Architectures

With technology scaling, newer metrics have been introduced, in addition to delay, area, and power dissipation, to characterize the behavior of digital systems. While dynamic and static power dissipation still remain the most serious concern at nanometer lengths (65nm and below), process-variation, temperature and aging induced variations pose new challenges in the fabrication of the next generation of ICs.

This work presents a detailed power and aging characterization of digital FIR filters in an industrial 45nm CMOS technology, and a design space exploration of different filter architectures with respect to throughput, area, power dissipation and aging. The exploration is intended to provide new design guidelines when considering aging of components in power/performance tradeoffs.