Performance Comparisons Between 7-nm FinFET and Conventional Bulk CMOS Standard Cell Libraries

FinFET devices have been proposed as a promising substitute for conventional bulk CMOS-based devices at the nanoscale due to their extraordinary properties such as improved channel controllability, a high ON/OFF current ratio, reduced short-channel effects, and relative immunity to gate line-edge roughness. This brief builds standard cell libraries for the advanced 7-nm FinFET technology, supporting multiple threshold voltages and supply voltages. The circuit synthesis results of various combinational and sequential circuits based on the presented 7-nm FinFET standard cell libraries forecast 10x and 1000x energy reductions on average in a superthreshold regime and 16x and 3000x energy reductions on average in a near-threshold regime as compared with the results of the 14-nm and 45-nm bulk CMOS technology nodes, respectively.