Development of a High-Accuracy Embedded Temperature Sensor Circuit Targeting 16 nano-meter finFET CMOS Semiconductor Technologies

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Moortec Semiconductor Ltd develop on-chip monitoring circuits and intellectual property (IP)for silicon chip devices manufactured on advanced technologies used in today’s electronicproducts. Moortec plan to develop an innovative high-accuracy, reliable and testableembedded Temperature Sensor (TS) prototype IP that will measure the temperature of circuitsmanufactured on 16 nano-meter (nm) finFET advanced CMOS technology nodes. Withadvances in silicon CMOS technology and the scaling of transistor channel lengths to nanometerdimensions, the density of digital circuits per unit area of silicon has increased. Thisincrease in digital logic (or gate) density, which equates to an increase in power density, hasbecome a major contributor to the heating of System on Chip (SoC) devices manufactured onadvanced CMOS nodes. The 16nm fin-FET (fin-based Field-Effect Transistor) technology is acutting-edge technology for the manufacture of chips and Moortec’s high accuracytemperature sensor will possess features and address applications that go beyond what iscurrently commercially available to the designers and developers of semiconductor devices.The primary application for on-chip temperature monitoring is performance optimisation, onesuch scheme being Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) where depending on thethermal conditions, system clocks and voltage supplies can be varied to optimise either thespeed of logical operations or power consumed by the device. For safety critical devices, thesilicon temperature can be measured and monitored by the system, potentially throughout thelifetime of the device, allowing algorithms to be used to avoid high temperatures and hencehigh stress to the device. The outcome of the project will be a silicon-proven 16nmtemperature sensor IP that will be licensed to SoC developers world-wide. Moortec’s aim is tobecome the primary IP vendor for on-chip PVT monitoring solutions for advanced nodesemiconductors worldwide.