ISSCC 2025
Session 21
Power Management
Merging Hybrid and Multi-Phase Topologies: A 6-Phase Triple-Step-Down DC-DC Converter Achieving up to a 60:1 Voltage Conversion Ratio and 868A/cm3 Current Density
voltage and current requirements, such as delivering over 1A at voltages below 1V. This drives the need for efficient point-of-load DC-DC converter topologies capable of large step-down conversion with high current densi
ISSCC 2025
Session 21
Power Management
A 2A Fully Analog Distribution LDO with Noise Immunity for an SoC
significant thermal dissipation. Because long-term exposure to high temperature degrades SoC performance, it is necessary to manage the temperature in the devices. Consequently, low-dropout regulators (LDO) that supply t
ISSCC 2025
Session 21
Power Management
A Fully Integrated Multi-Phase Voltage Regulator with
Soft-Switching to Discontinuous Conduction Mode in 3nm FinFET CMOS Kishan Joshi1, Avinash Shreepathi Bhat2, Christopher Schaef2, Keng Chen3, Edward Lee2, Yura Kocharyan1, Ajay Janardanan2, Dinesh Ganta2, Huanhuan Zhang3,
ISSCC 2025
Session 21
Power Management
A 97.4%-Peak-Efficiency Always-Half-Inductor-Current Hybrid Bidirectional Converter with Adaptive Target Current Tracking for USB-to-2-Cell Bidirectional Power Transfer
critical, particularly in those using a 2-cell battery such as tablets, portable gaming consoles, and power banks. In forward mode (FM), these devices are predominantly charged via a 5V USB travel adapter (VUSB), ensurin
ISSCC 2025
Session 21
Power Management
A Segmented-Interlacing Multi-Phase Hybrid Converter with Inherently Auto-Balanced ILs and Boosted IL Slew Rate During Load Transients
Instituto Superior Tecnico/University of Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 1 2 In datacenters, direct conversion from a 12V input voltage VIN intermediate bus to point-of-load (PoL) is a common practice for powering computing chi
ISSCC 2025
Session 21
Power Management
A Dual-Input Bidirectional 3-Level Battery Charger with Coarse-Fine VCF Balancing and Wide VCR for Foldable Mobile Applications
Jeongdu Yoo, Ho-Sung Son, Youngwoo Chung, Dong-Joon Kim, Youngwoo Park, Byeonghyeon Jin, Sungkyu Cho, Minkyu Kwon, Kyungmin Park, Daewoong Cho, Jung Wook Heo, Sungwoo Lee, Sungwoo Moon, Hyoung-Seok Oh, Hwayeal Yu Samsung
ISSCC 2025
Session 21
Power Management
A 12A 89.3% Peak Efficiency and 26mV Undershoot 12-to-1V Two-Stage Converter with Regulated Resonant Switched-Capacitor Regulators
require a large output current at sub-1V voltages. On the other hand, the input voltage of power converters must be raised to ease the I2R loss on the system voltage bus. The high input voltage and large output current r
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
An Autonomous and Lightweight Microactuator Driving System Using Flying Solid-State Batteries
electrostatic and piezoelectric actuators are crucial in small-scale electromechanical applications, but they significantly impact the overall system weight, especially in microrobotics [1,2,3]. These systems operate at
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
A 94.8nW Battery-Free Intelligent Silicon Platform Enabling
Haochen Zhang1, Wei-Han Yu1, Zhongyu Zhao1, Zhizhan Yang1, Ka-Fai Un1, Jun Yin1, Rui P. Martins1,2, Pui-In Mak1 University of Macau, Macau, China Instituto Superior Tecnico/University of Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 1 2 Sens
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
A 384-Site Chip Platform for Biochemical Applications with Individual Site Precision Temperature Control
Aditya Yadav1, David Lloyd3, Nicolò Ferri4, Mark Bignell4, Daniele Di Nuzzo4, Phillip Nadeau1, Matthew Hayes4, Roman Trogan1 Analog Devices, Boston, MA Analog Devices, Limerick, Ireland 3 Analog Devices, San Jose, CA 4 E
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
Fully Integrated Self-Propelling Microrobot in 180nm CMOS with Sub-GHz Parity-Time-Symmetry On-Chip Energy Harvesting and Traveling Wave Electroosmosis Actuation
developing millimeter-scale and micrometer-scale micro-robots. However, achieving autonomous motion within a CMOS die has remained a significant challenge. This difficulty stems from the need to integrate energy harvesti
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
Millimeter-Sized 0.1pM LoD Wireless 16-Channel Organic-Electrochemical-Transistor-Based Electrochemical Sensing SoC
such as TNF-alpha and IL-6, play a crucial role as biomarkers in the management of chronic diseases like autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer [1]. Since long-term monitoring of these cytokines is ess
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
MEMS-Free 4096-Pixel CMOS E-Nose Gas-Sensor Array with Molecular-Selective Metal-Organic-Framework Sensing and In-Pixel Thermodynamic Modulation for Fast Sensor Regeneration
species and concentrations is critical for a myriad of applications, including environmental protection, industry automation, public health monitoring, and bio-/chemical-security surveillance. For example, gas sensing in
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
An RFID-Inspired One-Step Packaged Multimode Bio-Analyzer#with Vacuum Microfluidics for Point-of-Care Diagnostics
low-concentration molecular biomarkers requires sending samples to centralized labs, leading to high costs and delays (Fig. 20.3.1). Recent developments in molecular diagnostics thus aim to enable point-of-care (POC) det
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
A 3×3.3mm Configurable γ Photon Spectrometer for Precision Radioguided Cancer Resection
University of California, San Francisco, CA 1 ~60% of cancer patients undergo surgery to remove a primary tumor, and precise removal of all cancer cells is vital for optimal outcomes [1]. Microscopic clusters of cancer c
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
A Crystal-less BodyID with an Asynchronous Clockless Leakage-Powered Wake-Up Receiver and Over-the-Channel Clock Recovery
Energy-constraint wireless transceivers with wake-up receivers (WuRX) traditionally rely on an always-running clock (Fig. 20.11.1) for sampling incoming data and digital correlation, necessitating local oscillator calibr
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
A 200GHz 200-Pixel 2D Near-Field Imager for Biomedical Applications
Near fields, unencumbered by the restrictions imposed by diffraction limits, can be leveraged in high-resolution sub-wavelength imaging systems [1]. Utilizing the near-fields generated by arrays of mmWave and THz resonat
ISSCC 2025
Session 20
Medical & Bio
A 3.5×3.5mm2 1.47mW/ch 16-Channel MSS-CMOS Heterogeneous Multi-Modal-Gas-Sensor Chip Stack
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan 4 University of Southern California, Los Angels, CA 1 2 Miniaturizing and reducing the power consumption of multi-modal gas sensors with multiple channels can enable a wide array of
ISSCC 2025
Session 2
Digital Processors
STEP: An 8K-60fps Space-Time Resolution-Enhancement Neural-Network Processor for Next-Generation Display and Streaming
driving ultra-high-definition (UHD) TVs and screens, offering users an immersive experience. However, the scarcity of 8K-UHD streams and the high cost of transmission bandwidth necessitate the use of ISP techniques on te
ISSCC 2025
Session 2
Digital Processors
A 210fps Image Signal Processor for 4K Ultra HD True Video Super Resolution
Google, Mountain View, CA 1 2 Video super-resolution (VSR) aims to convert low-resolution (LR) videos to high-resolution (HR) videos with high image quality [1]. It can be used for various video applications, such as str
ISSCC 2025
Session 2
Digital Processors
IRIS: A 8.55mJ/frame Spatial Computing SoC for Interactable Rendering and Surface-Aware Modeling with 3D Gaussian Splatting
applications, which demand a real-time and user-interactive 3D graphics system [1-3]. This requires real-time surface-aware modeling (SAM) to transfer a physical object to the virtual world, and interactive photorealisti
ISSCC 2025
Session 2
Digital Processors
mJ/Frame 373fps 3D GS Processor Based on Shape-Aware Hybrid Architecture Using Earlier Computation Skipping and Gaussian Cache Scheduler
applications like virtual reality and embodied AI. Unlike traditional Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) [1], the novel 3D Gaussian Splatting approach (3D GS) [2] circumvents NeRF’s frequent sampling and intensive network inf
ISSCC 2025
Session 2
AI / ML
A 16nm 5.7TOPS CNN Processor Supporting Bi-Directional FPN for Small-Object Detection on High-Resolution Videos
Kai-Feng Chang1, Yu-Ching Su1, Tsung-Han Hsieh1, Yu-Kuan Jian1, Wen-Ching Chen2, Nian-Shyang Chang2, Chun-Pin Lin2, Chi-Shi Chen2, Chao-Tsung Huang1 National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan Taiwan Semiconductor Res
ISSCC 2025
Session 2
Digital Processors
IBM Telum II: Next Generation 5.5GHz Microprocessor with On-Die Data Processing Unit and Improved AI Accelerator
Michael Becht2, Eduard Herkel5, Matthias Pflanz5, Pat Meaney2, Michael Romain2, Mark Cichanowski1, Amanda Venton1, David Wolpert2, Elazar Kachir4, Luke Hopkins2, Tim Bubb2, Andreas Arp5, Daniel Kiss5, Simon Büchsenstein5
ISSCC 2025
Session 2
Digital Processors
A 0.52mJ/Frame 107fps Super-Resolution Processor Exploiting Pseudo-FP6 Sparsity for Mobile Applications
increasingly employed across various domains. The ability to recover fine details is especially critical in mobile applications such as gaming, video, and photography [1]. However, mobile devices are usually sensitive to
ISSCC 2025
Session 2
Digital Processors
“Zen 5”: The AMD High-Performance 4nm x86-64 Microprocessor Core
Carson Henrion2, Alex Schaefer1, Brett Johnson2, Sarah Bartaszewicz Tower1, Kathy Hoover1, Deepesh John1, Ted Antoniadis1, Shravan Lakshman1, Vibhor Mittal1, Brian Kasprzyk1, Ross McCoy1, Kurt Mohlman1, Anitha Mohan1, Ho
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
A 0.65V-VDD 10.4-to-11.8GHz Fractional-N Sampling PLL
stage DPD is implemented digitally. Thanks to its cascaded structure, our HC-DPD with a 6b calibration coefficient can be split into two-stage 3b DPDs, enabling significant hardwareoverhead reduction compared to the conv
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
A 27GHz Fractional-N Sub-Sampling PLL Achieving 57.9fsrms
Haoran Li1, Jinge Li1, Xueying Jiang1, Xi Meng1, Jun Yin1, Rui P. Martins1,2, Pui-In Mak1 University of Macau, Macau, China Instituto Superior Tecnico/University of Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 1 2 Millimeter-wave (mm-wave)
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
A 60GHz I/Q-Calibrated SSB-Mixer-Based LO with Sub-ns Settling Time and -56dBc Worst-Case Spur Using ILO Filter in 28nm CMOS
University of California, Santa Babara, CA 3 Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Daejeon, Korea 1 2 Joint communication and radar sensing (JCAS) has been gaining much attention for its efficient use of spectrum, particul
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
A Differential Series-Resonance CMOS VCO with Pole-Convergence Technique Achieving 202.1dBc/Hz FoMTA at 10MHz Offset
sought for various applications, such as high-speed wireless/wireline communications, high-speed ADC/DACs, etc. According to Leeson’s formula (Fig. 19.5.1 top-left), achieving lower PN requires a larger VTANK or a smalle
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
An 8.1-to-9.9GHz Single-Core Pseudo-Series-Resonance Oscillator Achieving -128.7dBc/Hz PN at 1MHz
King’s College London, London, United Kingdom 1 2 As data-rate requirements in 5G-Advanced and future 6G communications continue to rise, an RF oscillator with ultra-low phase noise (PN) is a prerequisite for ensuring hi
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
A Fractional-N PLL with 34fsrms Jitter and -255.5dB FoM Based on a Multipath Feedback Technique
modulation schemes, such as 4K-QAM, and impose stringent phase-noise requirements on frequency synthesizers. In the past few years, an increasing number of frac-N PLLs with excellent jitter performance, i.e., sub-100fs,
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
A 13GHz Charge-Pump PLL Achieving 15.8fsrms Integrated Jitter and -98.5dBc Reference Spur
wideband data converters, have imposed extremely stringent demands on phase-locked loops (PLLs) for lower jitter and spurs. Benefiting from high phase-detector (PD) gain, sub-sampling PLLs (SSPLLs) achieve superior jitte
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
A 4.6GHz 63.3fsrms PLL-XO Co-Design Using a Self-Aligned Pulse-Injection Driver Achieving -255.2dB FoMJ Including the XO Power and Noise voltages as low as 0.28V for low-power VCO implementation, with the possibility to go up to 0.45V without risking gate-dielectric breakdown if lower out-of-band noise is needed. The performance of the VCO is further enhanced by the second-harmonic-resonance method applied at both supply and ground sides [18,19].
Figure 19.10.3 shows the details of the proposed pulse-injection XO driver and its noise characteristics. Figure 19.10.3 (left) shows the theoretical calculation and the simulation of the XO phase-noise (PN) floor (PNXO)
ISSCC 2025
Session 19
Clocking & PLLs
A PVT-Robust 5.5GHz Fractional-N Cascaded RO-Based Digital PLL with Voltage-Domain Feedforward Noise Cancellation
Instituto Superior Tecnico/University of Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal 1 Ring-oscillator (RO)-based digital PLLs (DPLLs) are well-suited for multi-PLL-integrated SoC designs owing to their compactness and immunity to magnetic
ISSCC 2025
Session 18
Data Converters
A Cryo-CMOS 800MS/s 7b CI-SAR with only 4fF Input Capacitance and 64dB SFDR
Cryo-CMOS has shown great potential to implement fast, scalable and efficient readout circuits for quantum bits (qubits). Several cryo-CMOS circuits for the dispersive readout of transmon qubits [1-2] or the reflectometr
ISSCC 2025
Session 18
Data Converters
A 70dB SNDR 80MHz BW Filter-Embedded Pipeline-SAR ADC Achieving 172dB FoMS with Progressive Conversion and Floating-Charge-Transfer Amplifier
before the ADC often occupies a significant area and noise contribution, especially when a Nyquist-sampling ADC is used and a sharp anti-aliasing BBF is thereby necessary (Fig. 18.7.1a). The continuous-time ∆Σ modulator
ISSCC 2025
Session 18
Data Converters
An Easy-Drive 16MS/s Pipelined-SAR ADC Using Split Coarse-Fine Input-Buffer-Sampling Scheme and Fast Robust Background Inter-Stage Gain Calibration
realized utilizing the energy-efficient pipelined-SAR architecture [1-2]. However, a large sampling capacitance is required to suppress the thermal noise, making ADCs challenging to drive. Although the integrated driving
ISSCC 2025
Session 18
Data Converters
A Rail-to-Rail 3rd-Order Noise-Shaping SAR ADC Achieving 105.4dB SFDR with Integrated Input Buffer Using Continuous-Time Correlated Level Shifting
With the development of high-resolution ADCs (>13b) leveraging the SAR topology, the pursuit of power efficiency in ADC design continues to make remarkable strides [1-5]. However, as the capacitance of the capacitive DAC
ISSCC 2025
Session 18
Data Converters
A 184.8dB-FoMS 1.6MS/s Incremental Noise-Shaping Pipeline ADC with Single-Amplification-Based kT/C Noise Cancellation Technique
high-resolution ∆Σ modulator, is favored for sensor nodes demanding high accuracy, good energy efficiency, and easy system integration. Conventional zoom ADCs, constrained by the low quantization levels of ∆Σ modulators,
ISSCC 2025
Session 18
Data Converters
A 12.2µW 99.6dB-SNDR 184.8dB-FOMS DT Zoom PPD ∆ΣM with Gain-Embedded Bootstrapped Sampler
consumption as they determine the overall noise and linearity performance. To achieve high resolution, discrete-time (DT) ∆ΣMs require large sampling capacitors [1-3]. This induces a huge driving burden for the ADC input
ISSCC 2025
Session 18
Data Converters
A Fully Dynamic Noise-Shaping SAR ADC Achieving 120dB SNDR and 189dB FoMS in 1kHz BW *Equally Credited Authors (ECAs) An issue of 3-level switching is that it suffers from nonlinearity caused by VCM error. As shown in Fig. 18.1.3, without VCM error, the asymmetric capacitor mismatch in a differential 3-level DAC only causes an offset (common-mode mismatch). But with VCM error, the characteristic curve of DAC becomes nonlinear. This nonlinearity mainly introduces the 2nd-order harmonic distortion, as the VCM usage is a bilaterally symmetry pattern versus DAC input value. This nonlinearity can be neatly solved by the system-level chopping. When the polarity of chopping signal is reversed, the DAC mismatch is also reversed. In this manner, the differential DAC mismatch is averaged out, as well as the offset caused by asymmetric DAC mismatch. In this design, the VCM voltage is generated by two 2.5MΩ off-chip resistors. High-resolution ADCs with micro power and kHz-level BW have wide applications in portable instrumentation, implantable devices and smart sensors. To enhance flexibility and improve energy efficiency, many systems require duty-cycled operation and expect power scaling
THD of -116dB, and it consumes high power due to the 4th-order loop filter. The zoom ADC in [2] combining with a coarse SAR and a fine DSM achieves 119.8dB SNR, but it can only process DC signals. The dynamic zoom ADCs [
ISSCC 2025
Session 17
Hardware Security
A 100MHz Self-Calibrating RC Oscillator Capable of Clock-Glitch Detection for Hardware Security in a 3nm FinFET Process
Mahmut Sinangil1, C. Thomas Gray2 Nvidia, Santa Clara, CA Nvidia, Durham, NC 1 2 On-chip oscillators are emerging as a critical circuit for improving the security of systemon-chips (SoCs). Many SoCs utilize an on-chip os
ISSCC 2025
Session 17
Hardware Security
An Eye-Opening Arbiter PUF for Fingerprint Generation Using Auto-Error Detection for PVT-Robust Masking and Bit Stabilization Achieving a BER of 2e-8 in 28nm CMOS
John G. Kauffman, Maurits Ortmanns University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) enable hardware identification and security key generation without storing them in non-volatile memory or exposing
ISSCC 2025
Session 17
Hardware Security
An Efficient Vth-Tilting PUF Design in 3nm GAA and 8nm FinFET Technologies and implemented in the 3nm (GAA) and 8nm (FinFet) technology nodes. The evaluations were performed on the test dies of both technologies across various process corners and operational conditions, where each die contains six PUF macros.
Figure 17.4.3 presents the distribution of &Vth in PUF cells, as measured in the analog Monte Jisu Kang, Taewook Park, Eunhye Oh, Gapkyung Kim, Sungha Lee, Hyunwoo Ko, Carlo simulation of 3nm (GAA) PUF cells, along with
ISSCC 2025
Session 17
Hardware Security
A 30.4GOPS/mW MK-CKKS Processor for Secure Multi-Party Computation
Secure data processing has become critical to privacy-preserving in the data-driven AI era. Multi-party computation (MPC) enables computations among multiple parties (users) in a collaborative way while preserving data p
ISSCC 2025
Session 17
Hardware Security
A 28nm 4.05µJ/Encryption 8.72kHMul/s Reconfigurable Multi-Scheme Fully Homomorphic Encryption Processor for Encrypted Client-Server Computing
Chen Chen1,2, Xiangdong Han1,2, Jinjiang Yang3,$Hanning Wang1,2, Min Zhu4, Shaojun Wei1,2, Aoyang Zhang1, Leibo$Liu1,2 Tsinghua University, Beijing, China Beijing National Research Center for lnformation Science and Tech
ISSCC 2025
Session 17
Hardware Security
Sensor-Less Laser Voltage-Probing Attack Detection via Run-Time-Leakage-Shift Monitoring with 4.35% Area Overhead
Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China 1 2 *Equally Credited Authors (ECAs) Higher levels of security are constantly demanded in view of the ever-expanding threats of physical attacks [1–7], whose
ISSCC 2025
Session 16
Digital Processors
SambaNova SN40L: A 5nm 2.5D Dataflow Accelerator with Three Memory Tiers for Trillion Parameter AI
Mahmood Khayatzadeh, Kyunglok Kim, Uma Durairajan, Jeongha Park, Satyajit Sarkar, Jinuk Luke Shin SambaNova Systems, Palo Alto, CA The SN40L is the latest-generation Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) from SambaNova Syst
ISSCC 2025
Session 16
AI / ML
An On-Device Generative AI Focused Neural Processing Unit in 4nm Flagship Mobile SoC with Fan-Out Wafer-Level Package
Mookyung Kang, Heeseok Lee, Jinwon Kang, Taeho Jeon, Dongwoo Lee, Yesung Kang, Kyungmok Kum, Geunwon Lee, Hongki Lee, Minkyu Kim, Suknam Kwon, Sung-beom Park, Dongkeun Kim, Chulmin Jo, HyukJun Chung, Ilryoung Kim , Jongy