Substrate bias switching unit for a low power processor

• Main Authors: NISHII OSAMU, KATSUKI YOICHI, SHIMURA TAKANORI, UCHIYAMA KUNIO, NARITA SUSUMU, MIZUNO HIROYUKI, TOTSUKA YONETARO, SEKINE ASAKO, ISHIBASHI KOICHIRO
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 07.06.2011
• Subjects: CALCULATING; CLADDING OR PLATING BY SOLDERING OR WELDING; CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION TECHNOLOGIES IN INFORMATION ANDCOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES [ICT], I.E. INFORMATION ANDCOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AIMING AT THE REDUCTION OF THIR OWNENERGY USE; COMPUTING; COUNTING; CUTTING BY APPLYING HEAT LOCALLY, e.g. FLAME CUTTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; MACHINE TOOLS; METAL-WORKING NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PHYSICS; SOLDERING OR UNSOLDERING; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS; TECHNOLOGIES OR APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATION OR ADAPTATION AGAINSTCLIMATE CHANGE; TRANSPORTING; WELDING; WORKING BY LASER BEAM

The feature of the present invention consists in: a processor main circuit for executing program instruction strings on a processor chip; a substrate bias switching unit for switching voltages of substrate biases applied to a substrate of the processor main circuit; and an operation mode control unit for controlling, in response to the execution of an instruction to proceed to a stand-by mode in the processor main circuit, the substrate bias switching unit in such a way that the biases are switched over to voltages for the stand-by mode, and for controlling, in response to an interruption of the stand-by release from the outside, the substrate bias switching unit in such a way that the biases are switched over to voltages for a normal mode, and also for releasing, after the bias voltages switched thereto have been stabilized, the stand-by of the processor main circuit to restart the operation.