In this paper, first a low-power pulse-triggered flip-flop (FF), a simple two-transistor AND gate is designed to reduce the circuit complexity. Second, a conditional pulse-enhancement technique is devised to speed up the discharge along the critical path only when needed. As a result, transistor sizes in delay inverter and pulse-generation circuit can be reduced for power saving. Various post layout simulation results based on United Microelectronics Corporation and Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (UMC CMOS) 50-nm technology reveal that the proposed design features the best power-delay-product performance in several FF designs under comparison. Its maximum power saving against rival designs is up to 18.2% and the average leakage power consumption is also reduced by a factor of 1.52.

 

Key words: Flip-flop, low power, pulse-triggered, pulse enhancement.