[paper] MOSFET-Based Voltage Reference Circuits

Moisello, Elisabetta, Edoardo Bonizzoni, and Piero Malcovati

MOSFET-Based Voltage Reference Circuits in the Last Decade: A Review

Micromachines 15, no. 12 (2024): 1504

Abstract: Voltage reference circuits are a basic building block in most integrated microsystems, covering a wide spectrum of applications. Hence, they constitute a subject of great interest for the entire microelectronics community. MOSFET-based solutions, in particular, have emerged as the implementation of choice for realizing voltage reference circuits, given the supply voltage scaling and the ever-lower power consumption specifications in various applications. For these reasons, this paper aims to review MOSFET-based voltage reference circuits, illustrating their principles of operation, as well as presenting a detailed overview of the state-of-the-art, in order to paint an accurate picture of the encountered challenges and proposed solutions found in the field in the last decade, thus providing a starting point for future research in the field.

FIG: Schematic of a generic threshold voltage-based MOSFET reference circuit

and graphical representation of a transistor ZTC point.

SSCS PICO Chronicle

Mirjana Videnovic-Misic, Harald Pretl, Ali Sabir, Zonghao (Chris) Li, 

and Sadayuki Yoshitomi

SSCS PICO Chronicles: news from the open source community

Date of current version: 14 November 2023

DOI: 10.1109/MSSC.2023.3315888

The Growing Activity of Open Source Chip Design in Japan

The Chipathon 2023 Team Japan consists of 12 volunteers from industry and academia. Since the team members are located in different parts of Japan, the team will be working remotely to design the project. On 4 August, they held a kickoff meeting where the members, who had been working together on Slack, gathered for the first time in person. Although many of the team members have no tape-out experience, they are all truly interested in IC design. The leader of Team Japan is Prof. Akira Tsuchiya at the University of Shiga in Japan (FIG).

Prof. Tsuchiya has been working on open source IC design and has been a volunteer member of the SSCS Chipathon since October 2022. He has promoted open source IC design and SSCS PICO activities in Japan. He held several hands-on events, for example, at the summer camp of the IE- ICE ICD in 2022. Also, he gave several talks about open source IC design and his research on analog synthesis in domestic conferences. And now, he has recruited members and applied to the latest Chipathon. Let’s look forward to the activities of the new members of “Team Japan.”

FIG: Prof. Akira Tsuchiya, an associate professor of the University of Shiga prefecture, 

Japan, and a snapshot of the kickoff meeting (hybrid) of the Chipathon 2023 Japan team