A low power 16-bit RISC microprocessor using ECRL circuits

Abstract

This paper presents a low power 16-bit adiabatic reduced instruction set computer "SQ microprocessor with efficient charge recovery logic (ECRL) registers. The processor consists of registers, a control block, a register file, a program counter, and an arithmetic and logical unit (ALU). Adiabatic circuits based on ECRL are designed using a 035 mum CMOS technology. An adiabatic latch based on ECRL is proposed for signal interfaces for the first time, and an efficient four-phase supply clock generator is designed to provide power for the adiabatic processor. A static CMOS processor with the same architecture is designed to compare the energy consumption of adiabatic and non-adiabatic microprocessors. Simulation results show that the power consumption of the adiabatic microprocessor is about 1/3 compared to that of the static CMOS microprocessor.