Method
and Apparatus for Capacitance Multiplication Within a Phase-Locked
Loop
Introduction
Both level-one and level-two caches are highly underutilized,
containing mostly dead data that will never again be used
before being thrown out of the cache. This low utilization
results in unnecessary power, energy, and area overheads,
while also being a lost opportunity for higher performance
if caches were better utilized. The proposed invention increases
the utilization of the cache, enabling more live blocks to
be stored in them at any given time, reducing cache misses
and increasing performance.
Benefits:
- A chip area of approximately 100 µm by 100 µm
can realize two 50 pF physical capacitors that can be multiplied
to make two capacitors with an apparent capacitance of 10
nF each. Without the invention it would take an area of
about 2 square mm to realize the capacitors. The invention
reduces the area by a factor of about 200.
Market Potential/Applications:
"Clean-up" phase-locked loops, low bandwidth analog
filters.
Contact:
University of Texas,
Austin, USA
Website : www.otc.utexas.edu

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