AMS and High-speed Interface IP Design Enablement in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe Process Technology

Update: Cadence Completes Acquisition of Cosmic Circuits (May 23, 2013)

Introduction - GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe Process Technology

The new 65nm LPe process from GLOBALFOUNDRIES, an enhanced version of its 65-nanometer lowpower process, utilizes innovative leakage reduction techniques to significantly improve SoC power utilization by up to 50 percent while extending battery efficiency by up to 25 percent. The result is a lower-power process especially well suited for battery-operated and cost-sensitive mobile applications. The process is also supported by a robust range of IP specifically optimized for the lower leakage capabilities.

The 65nm LPe process achieves leakage reduction through a shift in the performance-to-leakage ratio (Ion/Ioff) within the process' PMOS transistors. Given the same Ion (uA/um), the Ioff current is reduced by a magnitude of 20X. This directly impacts battery life, improving the efficiency of typical operation by 15-25 percent depending on the application. Cosmic Circuits has worked with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to create a full suite of analog, mixed-signal and high-speed interface IP for the new process, including analog front end (AFE), audio codecs, clocking circuits, switching and linear regulators, and interfaces such as MIPI DPHY.

IP Offering

Cosmic Circuits has a strong portfolio of over 30 different Analog, mixed-signal and high-speed interface IPs in the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe technology. The following table summarizes Cosmic Circuits solutions in the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe Technology

ADCs

Cosmic Circuits ADC solutions are already in volume production with multiple customers and cater to different applications such as WiFi, Digital Audio Broadcast, FM, Digital Multimedia Broadcasting and mobile broadband modems.

The high-speed ADC provides 10 bits of resolution and operates at a clock frequency of 80MHz. The design is based on a novel amplifier-less topology, an architecture that is ideally suited for design in a sub-micron CMOS process technology such as GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe. Modifications to the conventional SAR architecture coupled with the high speeds achieved in a process technology like GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe result in an optimized IP core. The ADC achieves very low area and power with the added benefit that these numbers scale with technology progression.

The 10-b, 1MSPS low-speed monitoring ADC also employs some of the technological innovations achieved in the high-speed ADC further extending the leadership that Cosmic Circuits has established in the monitoring ADC space.

DACs

Cosmic Circuits DAC solutions in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe can be broken down into three categories: 10 and 12-b high-speed DACs operating at speeds up to 160MHz for wireless applications such as WiFi and LTE, 8-b low-speed DAC for control applications and 10-b, 250MSPS triple DAC for Video applications.

The IO voltages are typically dictated by the peripherals that the ASIC is connected to and it is important that the IPs place minimal (preferably, none) additional constraints on the system supply design. Cosmic Circuits DAC solutions make judicious use of the drain-extended IO transistor available in the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe process to enable a wide range of support for the IO voltage.

The placement and architecture of the DACs are chosen to minimize the impact of mismatch. Careful engineering coupled with the inherent matching characteristics of the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe transistors results in ultra low-area solutions for the triple Video DAC with no compromise in performance.

High-speed Interfaces

Cosmic Circuits provides MIPI DPHY IPs that support 1.5Gbps throughput/lane with the flexibility to connect up to 4 lanes in parallel resulting in a total throughput of 6Gbps. The IP is used in chip-toperipheral interfaces such as camera-serial interface (CSI) and display-serial interface (DSI). Cosmic Circuits is a contributing member with the MIPI Alliance and is closely involved in the creation of the various standards for the mobile platform.

Cosmic Circuits is also creating the CSI-2 controllers that operate with the MIPI DPHY in order to provide customers with a complete solution. Reference boards with Cosmic MIPI PHY on silicon and controller on FPGA can be provided on request.

Clocking

The clocking solutions from Cosmic Circuits in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe technology include different types of Phase-Locked Loops (PLLs), Delay-Locked Loops (DLLs) and crystal oscillators.

The PLL solutions cater to general-purpose SoC clocking through a wide-range frequency-synthesis PLL, low-jitter requirements for communication or SERDES through the low-jitter PLL and EMI-mitigation requirements through the spread-spectrum frequency synthesis and off-chip IO interface clocking requirements through the de-skew PLL. The PLLs are designed to operate from the core supply in order to achieve low power.

Cosmic Circuits also provides wide-programmable range DLLs that can be used to delay the incoming clock in steps of 1% of the clock period. These DLLs cater to applications such as DDR for generation of the STROBE signal.

Power Management

Cosmic Circuits uses the drain-extended transistors available in the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe process in combination with innovative design techniques to provide 4.2V input support for the DC/DC converters in a 2.5V-IO process. With such an implementation, a direct connection to the battery becomes possible.

The other components necessary for a power-management unit (PMU) such as linear regulators and power-on-reset circuits are also provided.

The linear regulators come in different flavors.

1. Regulators that support up to 300mA load current while using an external capacitor for transient response and stability
2. Regulators that support up to 80mA load current with no external components targeted at applications that have a form factor requirement that preclude the use of external components.
3. Ultra low-power micro regulators that can be used for powering the basic keep-alive circuitry (RTC circuitry) in an ASIC. 4.2V support is provided on the input of these micro regulators. Power-on-Reset circuits for both core and IO supply are available.

Audio

The audio IP portfolio in GLOBALFOUNDRIES 65LPe includes solutions for both the playback (output) and record (input) path. A digital-input Class-D headphone amplifier along with PCM-PWM buffers that can drive an external 5.1 speaker configuration make up the playback path while the record path integrates the mic/line PGAs, sigma-delta ADCs and decimation filters. Both the record and playback paths achieve > 96dB dynamic range. A programmable microphone bias circuit is also integrated as part of this subsystem.

Silicon Validation

Given the rapidly shrinking development cycles, it is important that the IPs be well qualified before they are integrated into an SoC. Cosmic Circuits and GLOBALFOUNDRIES have worked together to ensure that all these IPs are validated on a test-chip platform. Cosmic Circuits silicon characterization report includes measurement on PVT corners and is qualified through the rigorous GLOBALFOUNDRIES QA process. A short video on Cosmic Circuits silicon validation capabilities is available below.