Stmicroelectronics S.r.l.

Francesco Cretti

Nuccio Villa

Lina Ferrari

Fleana Albertoni

Raffaele Izzo

A method and system are disclosed for designing a complex integrated electronic circuit architecture including a plurality of circuit portions integrated into a single chip structure. The method includes providing at least one library of cells with a variable channel length L; creating a layout of an integrated circuit using the cells with an initial channel length L; performing a timing analysis of the integrated circuit to analyze more and less critical paths by evaluating respective path delays; selecting a set of less critical paths to be modified; evaluating the leakage currents of the less critical paths of the selected set; and modifying the variable channel length L of the cells which are involved in the less critical paths of the selected set on the basis of the corresponding evaluated leakage current and the respective path delays, whereby a modified integrated circuit with a reduced circuit leakage current is obtained.

Method and system for designing semiconductor circuit devices to reduce static power consumption

A method for determining switching sequences of two-dimensional unary arrays of conducting branches of thermometrically decoded D/A converters, in a way that will ensure that the relative INL error function be contained between pre-established symmetrical upper and lower bound functions, has been found. When these upper and lower bound functions are constant, the obtained switching sequence compensates both the linear and the quadratic component of the error distribution and therefore is affected by a very small absolute INL error, which depends essentially on the random component of the error distribution. This method may be easily implemented by a computer program and allows the realization of thermometrically decoded D/A converters affected by a known limited INL error function.

Method of generating a switching sequence for an unary array of conducting branches and a relative thermometrically decoded digital-to-analog converter

A method for regulating the duty cycle of an input clock signal includes producing a second clock signal using a first adjustable delay circuit for varying the duty cycle. The second clock signal is applied to first and second circuits for respectively increasing and decreasing the duty cycle of the second clock signal. The method further includes monitoring if the first circuitry increases the duty cycle or if the second circuitry reducing the duty cycle saturates first. The duty cycle introduced by the first adjustable delay circuit is modified until saturation of the first and second circuits occur at substantially the same time.

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Milan, Italy

Francesco Cretti