Coding Approach for Low-Power 3D Interconnects

Abstract

Through-silicon vias (TSVs) in 3D ICs show a significant power consumption, which can be reduced using coding techniques. This work presents an approach which reduces the TSV power consumption by a signal-aware bit assignment which includes inversions to exploit the MOS effect. The approach causes no overhead and results in a guaranteed reduction of the overall power consumption. An analysis of our technique shows a reduction in the TSV power consumption by up to 48 % for real correlated data streams (e.g. image sensor), and 11 % for low-power encoded random data streams.