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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Marshall who wrote (45271)	1/10/1999 12:27:00 PM
From: Pravin Kamdar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580266

Marshall, Peek and pop in anytime you like. I think the key is "low power" - not "low voltage" although they do seem to go hand in hand. Power is proportional to voltage squared. A typical silicon junction drops ~0.6V and with the way most chips have to be designed you've got several of them in series thus necessitating a few volts for the circuitry to operate. You're thinking bipolar. These processors are designed using CMOS technology; where threshold voltages, not junction voltages, dictate the number of stacked gates you can fit between the rails. Many companies use "low Vt" devices to help with the problem. Together with low voltage design techniques, there is not much of a problem at 1.8 volts. However, as you lower the threshold voltage of a device for low voltage operation, the delineation between "ON" and "OFF" becomes muddled, and leakage currents become a problem. Pravin.