This paper presents a CMOS temperature sensor based on the thermal dependencies of the leakage currents targeting the 65 nm node. To compensate for the effect of process fluctuations, the proposed sensor realizes the ratio of two measures of the time it takes a capacitor to discharge through a transistor in the subthreshold regime. Furthermore, a novel charging mechanism for the capacitor is proposed to further increase the robustness against fabrication variability. The sensor, including digitization and interfacing, occupies 0.0016 mm2 and has an energy consumption of 47.7–633 pJ per sample. The resolution of the sensor is 0.28 °C, and the 3σ inaccuracy over the range 40–110 °C is 1.17 °C.

This paper introduces an efficient hardware approach to reduce the register file energy consumption by turning unused registers into a low power state. Bypassing the register fields of the fetch instruction to the decode stage allows the identification of registers required by the current instruction (instruction predecode) and allows the control logic to turn them back on. They are put into the low-power state after the instruction use. This technique achieves an 85% energy reduction with no performance penalty.Keywords: register file; in-order; power reduction; predecode; hardware approach.

The implementation of information and communication technologies (ICT) for health in Spain is described. In the framework of the Healthcare Online program put into operation by the Spanish government, a series of initiatives have been undertaken at the regional level in Spain, in order to address the demand from both citizens and healthcare professionals for better, more efficient, and cost-effective care. This chapter focuses on the results of a study at the national level on the current status of basic healthcare services based on ICT, such as the individual health card, interoperable electronic healthcare records, e-prescription, etc. During recent years, strategic projects carried out by the Spanish government, in collaboration with the Regional Departments of Health, have demonstrated significant progress towards the adaptation of the National Healthcare System to current information technologies, by optimizing the utilization of available resources, controlling healthcare expenditures, and consequently offering more efficient and sustainable healthcare services and tools for professionals and citizens for easy access to better and more structured information for their healthcare-related decisions.

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