Leakage power reduction for coarse-grained dynamically reconfigurable processor arrays using dual Vt cells

One of benefit of coarse-grained dynamically reconfigurable processor arrays (DRPAs) is their low dynamic power consumption by operating a number of processing element (PE) in parallel with a low frequency clock. However, in the future advanced process, the leakage power will occupy a considerable part of the total power consumption, and it may degrade the advantage of DRPAs. In order to reduce the leakage power of DRPA without severe performance degradation, eight designs (Mult, Sw, MultSw, LowHalf, 1Row, ColHalf, Sw+Half and Sw+Mult) using Dual-Vt cells are evaluated based on a prototype DRPA called MuCCRA-3T. Evaluation results show that Sw in which Low-Vt cells are only used in switching elements of the array achieved the best power-delay product. If performance of Sw is not enough, Sw+Half in which Low-Vt cells are used for a lower half PEs and all switching elements improves 24% of the leakage power with 5%-14% of extra delay time of the design with all Low-Vt cells.