TY - JOUR
T1 - A 47.14-μW 200-MHz MOS/MTJ-Hybrid Nonvolatile Microcontroller Unit Embedding STT-MRAM and FPGA for IoT Applications
AU - Natsui, Masanori
AU - Suzuki, Daisuke
AU - Tamakoshi, Akira
AU - Watanabe, Toshinari
AU - Honjo, Hiroaki
AU - Koike, Hiroki
AU - Nasuno, Takashi
AU - Ma, Yitao
AU - Tanigawa, Takaho
AU - Noguchi, Yasuo
AU - Yasuhira, Mitsuo
AU - Sato, Hideo
AU - Ikeda, Shoji
AU - Ohno, Hideo
AU - Endoh, Tetsuo
AU - Hanyu, Takahiro
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received April 25, 2019; revised June 24, 2019; accepted July 12, 2019. Date of publication August 13, 2019; date of current version October 23, 2019. This paper was approved by Guest Editor Sriram Vangal. This work was supported in part by ImPACT Program of CSTI, in part by Industry-Academic Collaboration of CIES Consortium through spin-transfer-torque magnetoresistive random access memory (STT-MRAM) Research and Development Program, and in part by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI under Grant 16KT0187 and Grant 17KK0001. (Corresponding author: Masanori Natsui.) M. Natsui and T. Hanyu are with the Laboratory for Brainware Systems, Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan, also with the Center for Spintronics Integrated Systems, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan, and also with the Center for Innovative Integrated Electronic Systems, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8577, Japan (e-mail: natsui@riec.tohoku.ac.jp).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 IEEE.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - The demand for energy-efficient, high-performance microcontroller units (MCUs) for the use in power-supply-critical Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensor-node applications has witnessed a substantial increase. In response, research concerning the development of several low-power-consuming MCUs has been actively pursued. The performance level of such MCUs, however, has not been sufficient, thereby rendering them non-feasible for the use in IoT sensor-node applications that process a large number of received signals immediately followed by extraction of valuable information from them to limit data transferred to a data center. To realize next-generation IoT systems based on intelligent sensor-node application, ultra-low-power high-performance MCUs need to be developed. This paper presents an ultra-low-power-consuming and high-performance MCU configuration based on the spintronics device technology, using which all modules are non-volatilized, and any wasteful power consumption is eliminated by controlling the power supplied independently to each module. By incorporating a reconfigurable accelerator module, for performing various signal-processing procedures in sensor-node applications, and a memory controller, which can speed up the entire system by relaxing the data-transfer bottleneck of logic and memory, the proposed MCU configuration achieves ultra-low power consumption and high-speed operation. As confirmed by the results obtained via measurements performed on a fabricated chip, the proposed MCU design, on average, consumed 47.14 μW power at an operating frequency of 200 MHz. This corresponds to the world's highest signal-processing performance and energy efficiency of highly functional IoT sensor nodes powered by harvested energy
AB - The demand for energy-efficient, high-performance microcontroller units (MCUs) for the use in power-supply-critical Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensor-node applications has witnessed a substantial increase. In response, research concerning the development of several low-power-consuming MCUs has been actively pursued. The performance level of such MCUs, however, has not been sufficient, thereby rendering them non-feasible for the use in IoT sensor-node applications that process a large number of received signals immediately followed by extraction of valuable information from them to limit data transferred to a data center. To realize next-generation IoT systems based on intelligent sensor-node application, ultra-low-power high-performance MCUs need to be developed. This paper presents an ultra-low-power-consuming and high-performance MCU configuration based on the spintronics device technology, using which all modules are non-volatilized, and any wasteful power consumption is eliminated by controlling the power supplied independently to each module. By incorporating a reconfigurable accelerator module, for performing various signal-processing procedures in sensor-node applications, and a memory controller, which can speed up the entire system by relaxing the data-transfer bottleneck of logic and memory, the proposed MCU configuration achieves ultra-low power consumption and high-speed operation. As confirmed by the results obtained via measurements performed on a fabricated chip, the proposed MCU design, on average, consumed 47.14 μW power at an operating frequency of 200 MHz. This corresponds to the world's highest signal-processing performance and energy efficiency of highly functional IoT sensor nodes powered by harvested energy
KW - Energy harvesting
KW - Internet of Things
KW - field-programmable gate arrays
KW - magnetic tunnel junction
KW - microcontroller unit (MCU)
KW - spin-transfer-torque magnetoresistive random access memory (STT-MRAM)
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U2 - 10.1109/JSSC.2019.2930910
DO - 10.1109/JSSC.2019.2930910
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074463537
VL - 54
SP - 2991
EP - 3004
JO - IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
JF - IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
SN - 0018-9200
IS - 11
M1 - 8796413
ER -
