IP to accelerate energy-efficient SoC designs and push the boundaries of single-chip integration

Santa Clara, Calif. and Grenoble, France, February 19, 2019

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) and Dolphin Integration, a leading provider of semiconductor IP, today announced a collaboration to develop a series of adaptive body bias (ABB) solutions to improve the energy efficiency and reliability of system-on-chip (SoC) on GF’s 22nm FD-SOI (22FDX®) process technology for a wide range of high-growth applications such as 5G, IoT and automotive.

As part of the collaboration, Dolphin Integration and GF are working together to develop a series of off-the-shelf ABB solutions for accelerating and easing body bias implementation on SoC designs. ABB is a unique 22FDX feature that enables designers to leverage forward and reverse body bias techniques to dynamically compensate for process, supply voltage, temperature (PVT) variations and aging effects to achieve additional performance, power, area and cost improvements beyond those from scaling alone.  

The ABB solutions in development consist of self-contained IPs embedding the body bias voltage regulation, PVT and aging monitors and control loop as well as complete design methodologies to fully leverage the benefits of corner tightening. GF’s 22FDX technology offers the industry’s lowest static and dynamic power consumption. With automated transistor body biasing adjustment, Dolphin Integration can achieve up to 7x energy efficiency with power supply as low as 0.4V on 22FDX designs.