Sony Corporation

Tetsuo Kondo

Takahiro Seki

Katsunori Seno

Akihiko Hashiguchi

A power supply voltage control apparatus including an input signal generation circuit of wide uses or a small-sized monitor circuit of a novel configuration, and a semiconductor circuit and a method for driving the same, having a semiconductor circuit, an input signal generation circuitable to change the phase difference i of a reference signal out&#x3c6;i and an input signal out&#x3c6;in accordance with a control signal Si when generating the two signals from a clock, a monitor circuithaving a characteristic between a power supply voltage and delay the same as that of a critical path of the semiconductor circuit, propagating the input signal out&#x3c6;, and outputting a delayed signal out&#x3c6;' to be delayed exactly by a time equivalent to a delay of the critical path (or smaller by a constant ratio), a delay detection circuitfor detecting a delay of the delayed signal out&#x3c6;&#x2032; relative to the reference signal out&#x3c6;i, and a power supply voltage control circuitfor controlling a power supply voltage Vsupplied to the semiconductor deviceand the monitor circuitbased on the detection result.

Power supply control device, semiconductor device and method of driving semiconductor device

A semiconductor device provided with a replica circuit functioning as an equivalent circuit to that of a path configuration selected as a critical path in the semiconductor circuit and an adjustable delay device for example between an output side of the replica circuit and a phase comparator, the delay value of the delay device being adjustable after production of the chip to a value enabling the replica system including the replica circuit to reliably operate with a margin from the critical path delay of the semiconductor circuit, whereby it becomes possible to prevent setting of an excessive margin and becomes possible to increase the margin when the margin ends up smaller than expected and therefore it becomes possible to flexibly and efficiently configure the replica circuit, and a method of constitution of the same.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Tetsuo Kondo