Patent Application: US-201414444422-A

Abstract:
a field programmable gate array of the island - type comprising a plurality of cluster - based configurable logic blocks , whereby each of the cluster - based clbs is surrounded by a global routing structure formed by a plurality of multiplexers and pass / transmission - gates organized in switch boxes and connection blocks , the switch boxes and the connection blocks comprising at least a first plurality of resistive memories inserted in a data path of a first routing architecture of the switch boxes and the connection blocks . each clb contains basic logic elements , as well as local routing resources .

Description:
in this section , we review the necessary background of conventional fpga architectures as well as rm - based fpga architectures . fig1 depicts the conventional fpga architecture with single - driver routing [ 15 ], where configurable logic blocks ( clbs ) are surrounded by routing resources , such as switch boxes ( sbs ) and connection blocks ( cbs ). a clb contains logic resources , called basic logic elements ( bles ), as well as routing resources , denoted as local routing . a ble consists of a look - up table ( lut ), a d flip - flop ( dff ) and a 2 - input multiplexer , which selects either the combinational or sequential version of the lut output . sbs and cbs consist of groups of multiplexers , that can realize any interconnection as long as there are enough routing tracks . fpga performance is influenced by the number of lut inputs , denoted k , the number of bles in a clb , denoted n , and the number of inputs of a clb , denoted i . previous works [ 13 ] [ 14 ] conclude that i = k ( n + 1 )/ 2 ensures over 98 % utilization of clbs . commercial fpgas [ 16 ]-[ 18 ] widely support fracturable luts [ 19 ] to reduce the critical path . in the present description , we typically consider fpga consisting of k = 6 fracturable luts organized in logic blocks described by n = 10 , i = 33 . as one of the most promising emerging nvm memories [ 7 ], rm technologies have been widely investigated [ 6 ]. as shown in fig2 ( a ), rms are two - node electronic devices and typically consist of three layers : the top electrode , the metal oxide and the bottom electrode . rms can be programmed into two stable resistance states , a low resistance state ( lrs ) and a high resistance state ( hrs ) respectively by modifying the conductivity of metal oxide . when a programming voltage is applied between the electrodes , the metal oxide sees a conductivity change which leads to the switch of the resistance states . switching mechanisms can be categorized into unipolar resistive switching ( urs ) and bipolar resistive switching ( brs ) [ 6 ]. in the present description , we focus on brs whose i - v characteristics are illustrated in fig2 ( c ). a positive programming voltage sets the rm in lrs while a negative one resets the rm in hrs . the on - resistance of rm is typically dependent on the programming current passing through the rm [ 20 ]. the higher programming current we drive , the lower on - resistance rm we obtain . note that during the set process , a current compliance is often enforced to avoid permanent breakdown of the device . fig2 ( b ) shows a 1t1r structure , where the programming transistor provides set / reset voltages as well as a current compliance . back - end - of - line ( beol ) technology allows rm to be fabricated on the top of or between metal layers , saving chip area . fig2 ( a ) illustrates the beol integration of rms corresponding to 1t1r programming scheme in fig2 ( b ). fpga architecture can benefit from the non - volatility as well as the area and performance gains coming from the beol integration and the low on - resistance values achieved by rms . to improve the luts , srams can be simply replaced with voltage divider - like rm structures [ 11 ]. however , more opportunities lie in the routing architecture where not only srams but also pass - transistors can be improved with rms [ 9 ]-[ 12 ], thereby increasing the performances significantly . when programmed in lrs , rms introduce about 75 % less resistance in the data - path , compared to pass transistors . works in [ 9 ] [ 10 ] propose novel routing architecture exploiting rm - based programmable switches while [ 11 ] [ 12 ] explore the architectural - level potential of rm - based multiplexers . to reduce the impact of the programming switches , programming transistor sharing is heavily studied in [ 9 ] [ 10 ] for area - saving purpose but requires complicated programming operation . in [ 11 ], the programming complexity is reduced by exploiting the physical properties of rms . in this section , we describe an example embodiment of the a rm - based fpga circuit design according to the invention . furthermore we explore its use in near - vt regime . the rm - based fpga described in the present patent application is similar in respect to its architecture to the conventional sram - based fpga shown in fig1 . it remains an island - style fpga where the cluster - based clbs are surrounded by sbs and cbs . the differences between the rm - based fpga and rh sram based fpga lie in the circuit design of those modules heavily relying on luts and multiplexers . fig3 compares the circuit designs of lut and multiplexer between a conventional sram - based fpga and the rm - based fpga according to the invention described in the present document . in the fpga according to the invention , the logic elements exploit non - volatile ( nv ) luts . such fpga does not need to be re - programmed during each power on and can benefit instant - on and normally - off properties . a prior art lut typically consists of a bank of srams and a multiplexer . the sram bank stores a truth table which is decoded by the multiplexer , enabling the lut to realize any logic function . according to the invention , we replace the scan - chain srams ( fig3 ( a )) in luts with non - volatile ( nv ) scan - chain srams borrowed from previous work [ 22 ]. the multiplexers in luts are still implemented by pass - transistors considering that their decoding results keep changing when the fpga is operating . if rms are inserted in the data path of luts for decoding , their programming speed will drastically limit frequency . compared to sram - based , the nv luts have no difference in performance because of the same decoder implementation . data path dffs are also non - volatiled with the same circuit elements . these ffs operate as standard volatile cmos ff during regular operation but they are also capable to store the data non - volatily on demand before a sleep period . data stored in the nv dffs can then be restored during wake up . in these flip - flops , rms are written only before the sleep period . these events have very low frequency and are compatible with the endurance capabilities of rms . while the decoded paths of the lut multiplexer change at runtime , the selected paths in the routing multiplexers ( i . e ., in ble output selector , local routing , sbs and cbs ) remain unchanged during the runtime . therefore , rms can be inserted in the data path of routing architecture without challenging the endurance . fig3 ( d ) illustrates the rm - based multiplexer [ 11 ] which replaces the sram - based multiplexer shown in fig3 ( c ). rm - based multiplexers take advantage of the bipolar resistive switching ( brs ) in order to share programming transistors and achieve area - efficiency [ 11 ]. as shown in fig3 ( d ), each pair of rms ( e . g ., r 1 and r 2 ) can be programmed in either hrs + lrs or lrs + hrs in one step . compared to the sram - based multiplexers , the rm - based multiplexers exhibit high performances accounted to the low on - resistance of the rms introduced in the data path . however , a low on - resistance of the rms means high programming currents . in other words , they need large programming transistors which potentially introduce large parasitic capacitance to the data paths and result in area and delay in - efficiencies . in conventional sram - based low - power fpgas , a reduction of the supply voltage down to near / sub - vt regime trades off power reduction with delay degradation . in rm - based fpgas , logic elements such as luts and dffs rely on the same circuit topologies . therefore , their performances degrade when supply voltage reduces to near / sub - vt regime . however , routing architectures in the rm - based fpga exploit rms in the data paths and may perform differently compared to sram - based when supply voltage changes . hence , in this part , we study the impact of supply voltage on the performances of rm - based routing architecture . electrical simulations are performed in a commercial 0 . 18 μm technology . nowadays , low - power near / sub - vt designs are implemented with mature technology node for better leakage characteristics and reliability . nevertheless , the approach introduced in the present description is general and can lead to the same conclusion under other technology nodes . we also consider rm device parameters , r on = 1 kω and r off = 1 mω in [ 23 ]. the fpga routing architecture consists of multiplexers of different sizes , which appear in local routing , cbs and sbs . here , we consider a local 32 - input multiplexer . for the multiplexers of other sizes , the same conclusions can be reached . fig4 compares the delay and power between a 32 - input sram - based multiplexer and its rm - based counterpart when vdd ranges from 0 . 4 v to 1 . 8 v . both rm - based and sram - based multiplexers reduce power but suffer from delay degradation when vdd decreases . generally , rm - based multiplexer consumes slightly more power than sram - based due to the low on - resistance of rms in data paths . however , sram - based fpga routing architecture suffers serious delay degradation when vdd decreases . in contrast , rm - based fpga routing architecture benefit the same power reduction but with very moderate delay degradation . the different trends in delay degradations are accounted to the low on - resistance of rms which is achieved independently from vdd , while on - resistance of pass transistors increase sharply when vdd decreases . furthermore , the parasitic capacitances brought by the programming transistors do not vary significantly until vdd drops to sub - vt regime . therefore , the delay of rm - based multiplexer in near - vt regime remains as they are at vdd = 1 . 8 v since its rc characteristic does not change . when vdd drops to sub - vt regime , rm - based multiplexer has serious delay degradation as well due to parasitic capacitances of programming transistors increase . fig4 shows us to select a proper vdd in the near - vt regime . hence , the rm - based fpga will achieve both low - power and high - performance . the high - performance rm - based routing architectures are expected to compensate the delay degradation in the logic elements , and even reduce the overall critical path delay . in sram - based fpgas , srams bits are configured by scan - chain srams , as shown in fig3 ( a ). all scan - chain srams are connected in series ( i . e ., dash lined in fig3 ( c )) and the program bitstream is serially loaded to the scan - chain srams until all sram bits are configured . in rm - based fpgas , scan - chain srams in logic elements are adapted to the nv scan - chain srams as shown in fig3 ( b ). each stage of the rm - based multiplexer ( fig3 ( d )) is configured sequentially [ 12 ]. when the program bit is loaded in the scan - chain srams for a certain stage , the corresponding programming transistors are turned on . after programming , these programming transistors are turned off . in the rm - based fpga , rms in the data paths should not be mistakenly programmed when transmitting signals . this critical concern is avoided by ensuring that the programming voltage v prog for rms is larger than supply voltage vdd , as shown in equation ( 1 ): in a preferred embodiment , we set λ to 1 . 2 , to provide 20 % slack between vdd and v prog . the v prog parameter can be easily adjusted by tuning the rm stack geometries [ 6 ]. note that vdd is expected to be near - vt . therefore v prog will stay in a regular range , i . e ., super threshold , of the mos transistors , that can be used as is . in this section , we describe the impact of programming transistor size on the performance of rm - based routing architecture . estimate their optimal size is estimated and it is verified by electrical simulations . in previous works [ 9 ]-[ 12 ], the sizes of programming transistors are considered uniform to achieve the lowest on - resistance of rm , which is assumed to produce the best performance of rm - based interconnects . actually , the delay of rm - based programmable interconnects is determined by various factors , such as the size of the driving inverter , the parasitic capacitance of programming transistors , and the resistance of the rms . hence , as the on - resistance value is strongly correlated with the size of the programming transistors [ 6 ], there is no guarantee that using the lowest possible on - resistance will give the lowest delay . in this section , we focus on the impact of programming transistor size on the delay of rm - based multiplexers . note that the methodology developed here is not dependent on the considered rm technology or on the transistor technology nodes , but is rather general . the critical path of a rm - based multiplexer is the path from an input to the output which contains the largest number of rms in the on - resistance state and the largest number of programming transistors . for instance , the highlighted path in fig5 ( a ) is the critical path of a 4 - input rm - based multiplexer . fig5 ( b ) extends this to the general case of a n - stage rm - based multiplexer , while its equivalent rc model is given in fig5 ( c ). the resistance and capacitance in fig5 ( c ) can be extracted from fig5 ( b ) and expressed as follows : where r min denotes the equivalent resistance of a minimum size inverter , c inv represents the parasitic capacitance at the output of a minimum size inverter , w inv is the size of driving inverter in terms of the minimum width transistor [ 13 ]. r on denotes the equivalent resistance of a rm in on - resistance state . w prog represents the width of programming transistor in the unit of the minimum width transistor , and c off is the parasitic capacitance of a minimum width programming transistor in off state . considering the elmore delay [ 24 ] of the critical path of a general n - stage rm - based multiplexer ( fig5 ( b )), we obtain : as introduced previously , the on - resistance r on of rm is dependent on the programming voltage v prog and on the programming current i prog [ 6 ], as follows : where i d is the driving current of a minimum width transistor . with equation ( 4 ), equation ( 3 ) is converted to : the relation between the n - stage multiplexer delay and the width of the programming transistor is depicted in fig6 . when w prog is small , the delay increases due to the large on - resistance of rm . when w prog is large , the delay increases as well . indeed , while the on - resistance is reduced , large parasitic capacitances are introduced by the programming transistors and limit the performances . therefore , as shown in fig6 , there exists an optimal w prog , opt giving the best performances by trading off the on - resistance with the parasitic capacitances from the programming transistors . equation ( 5 ) reaches minimum value ( best delay ) when : in fpga routing architecture , the number of the stages of multiplexers are diverse . as equation 6 depends on the size n of the multiplexer , using a uniform size of programming transistors [ 9 ]-[ 12 ] does not ensure the best performance . to achieve the best performances , the multiplexers in fpga should have different w prog , opt . note that a similar approach can be considered to minimize other circuit metrics such as area or power , by deriving the closed - form relation of these parameters . please also note that even though the optimization has been performed in the context of fpgas , it is straightforwardly applicable in more general digital circuits requiring high - performance reconfigurable routing multiplexers . in this section , we show some electrical simulations to verify the analysis developed above . equation 6 reveals that w prog , opt is related to many process parameters : v prog , i d , r min and c off , and some design - dependent parameters , w inv , c l and n . process parameters , i d , r min and c off , are extracted from a commercial 0 . 18 μm technology . as for design parameters , we refer to [ 13 ] [ 15 ] and study multiplexers for sb , cb , ble and local routing assuming a baseline fpga architecture . table 1 presents the setup for the different rm - based multiplexers considered in the fpga architecture . winv of multiplexers in sbs , cbs and bles are set as 1 . winv of multiplexers in local routing is set as 2 to drive the signal from routing tracks . the load of multiplexers in ble , cb and local routing are set as a inverter × 1 . in sbs , load of multiplexer is set as a inverter × 10 in order to drive the large parasitic capacitance of a routing track . with all the defined parameters above , we sweep vdd from 0 . 4 v to 1 . 8 v and w prog from 1 to 3 to explore their impact on delay and edp . the lower bound is set to 1 for the minimum width transistor . the upper bound of w prog is set to 3 , which is the size of a pair of complementary pass transistors , to limit the area overhead . equation 6 predicts that when v prog decreases , w prog , opt decreases . experimental results in fig7 verify this prediction . fig7 depicts the delay of a 32 - input multiplexer extracted while sweeping vdd and w prog . the curves , obtained for vdd = 1 . 8 v and vdd = 1 . 4 v , are similar to the region pointed out by the white - headed arrow in fig6 . in these two cases , the best performance is achieved when w prog = 3 and w prog = 2 , respectively . the curve obtained for vdd = 0 . 8 v corresponds to the region illustrated by a black - headed arrow in fig6 . in this case , the best performance is achieved when w prog = 1 . when comparing the three curves , we observe that the best performance shifts from w prog = 3 when vdd = 1 . 8 v to w prog = 1 when vdd = 0 . 8 v for a 32 - input rm - based multiplexer . for low - power fpgas , designers often consider the best energy - delay product ( edp ) as a good trade - off metrics . fig8 presents the optimal w prog , opt , i . e ., leading to the best edp , of the different multiplexers listed in table 1 by sweeping vdd ranging from 0 . 4 v to 1 . 8 v . equation 6 predicts that a large capacitive load leads to a large w prog , opt . the curve of the 4 - input multiplexers in sbs , whose loads are inverters 10 × verifies this prediction , where w prog , opt is significantly larger than the other multiplexers . equation 6 also predicts that w prog , opt increases when the number of multiplexer stage increases . by comparing the curves of 32 - input , 4 - input and 2 - input multiplexers , we remark that the w prog , opt of a 32 - input multiplexer is the largest while a 2 - input multiplexer requires the smallest w prog , opt . note that we determine w prog , opt in terms of the best edp rather than delay . hence , the results in the sub - vt regime do not strictly perform as predicted by equation 6 because the energy values dominate the edp in the sub - vt regime . the experimental results show that non - uniform sizes of programming transistors produce best delay and edp . optimal sizes of programming transistors in the multiplexers differ from their design contexts in fpgas . for instance , the multiplexers in sbs require large programming transistors while the multiplexers in bles and local routing require small programming transistors . these experimental results are particularly appealing in the context of sub / near - vt fpgas , where the sizes of the programming transistors can be reduced , contributing to not only area - saving but also to further delay and power efficiencies . take the example of the 4 - input multiplexers in sbs . when vdd = 1 . 2 v is applied , compared to uniform size ( w prog = 3 ), w prog , opt = 2 . 4 leads to a 20 % area reduction , yet ensuring the best edp . in this section , architectural - level simulations are carried out to evaluate near - vt rm - based fpgas . first , we introduce the experimental methodology and , then , we present the experimental results . we compare the area , delay and power of four different fpgas : ( 3 ) the rm - based fpga architecture using uniform programming transistor sizing at vdd = 1 . 2v , and ( 4 ) the rm - based fpga architecture using non - uniform optimized programming transistors sizing at vdd = 1 . 2 v . at near - vt regime , we select 1 . 2 v as vdd , because it provides a reasonable trade - off between performance gain in rm - based routing architecture and performance degradation in logic elements . architecture - level results are generated by vtr flow [ 26 ]. the twenty largest mcnc benchmarks [ 25 ] pass through logic synthesis by abc [ 27 ]. vpr 7 [ 26 ] conducts the physical synthesis including packing , placement and routing . we use the configurable logic block ( clb ) architecture described herein above in the present description and single - driver routing architecture . for the connection blocks ( cbs ), we set fc , in = 0 . 15 and fc , out = 0 . 10 . for the switch boxes ( sbs ), we use a wilton pattern and set fs = 3 . technology parameters ( area , delay and power ) are extracted from commercial 0 . 18 μm technology . fig9 , fig1 and fig1 show the experimental results for area , delay and power , respectively . fig9 illustrates the area comparison between the four fpga architectures . compared to the standard fpga architectures , the uniform programming transistor sized rm - based fpga working at vdd = 1 . 2 v saves 15 % area on average thanks to the beol technology which moves memories to the top of the chip . compared to the uniformly sized rm - based fpga , rm - based fpga using the non - uniformly sized programming transistors saves further 18 % area on average thanks to the reduced impact of the programming transistors in the routing structure . fig1 illustrates the delay comparison between the four fpga architectures . when vdd drops from 1 . 8 v to 1 . 2 v , the standard fpga architecture sees a 30 % increase in its critical path delay , resulting from the degradation of driving current that transistors can provide . compared to the standard fpga architecture at vdd = 1 . 8 v , the rm - based fpga using uniformly sized programming transistors reduces by 10 % on average the delay even at vdd = 1 . 2 v . this comes from the high performance of the rm - based routing architecture . the rm - based routing architectures can still produce high performance at vdd = 1 . 2 v and even compensate the delay degradation in logic elements , leading to overall performance gain . such a result is extremely interesting as it shows that a near - vt rm - based fpga is able to overperform a regular cmos architecture working at nominal voltage . compared to the uniformly sized rm - based fpga , the non - uniformly sized rm - based fpga can further improve 2 % delay on average . the delay gain comes from the programming transistor sizing methodology that controls the impact of the parasitic capacitances introduced by the programming transistors and lead to the best edp figures . fig1 illustrates the power comparison between the four fpga architectures . both the standard and rm - based near - vt fpga architectures reduce on average by 65 % the power consumption . this is accounted directly to the reduction of v dd . at the same vdd , rm - based and standard fpgas have almost no difference in power consumption because of the similar switching capacitances in the data paths . in the logic elements , rm - based and standard fpgas have similar switching capacitances because they share similar circuit topologies . in the rm routing architectures , the switch capacitances come from the programming transistors , while in the standard routing architecture , they come from the pass transistors . the number of programming transistors in a rm - based multiplexer roughly equals to the number of pass transistors in a standard one . therefore , the switch capacitances in routing architectures are similar . the present specification describes a near - vt rm - based fpga , where low - power can be achieved along with area reduction and performance improvement thanks to the high performance of rm - based routing architecture . experimental results show that it improves area by 15 %, delay by 10 % and power by 65 % as compared to the standard architecture working at nominal voltage . to push forward the area efficiency of rm - based routing architecture , we also propose a de - sign methodology to size the programming transistors of the rms . both theoretical analysis and electrical simulations show that non - uniform sizing gives not only area savings but also better performance and edp than using uniformly sized programming transistors . architectural - level simulations demonstrate optimal sized programming transistors further optimizes the near - 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