Blackghost 1.0 test chip: On the road towards commercializing ultra-low-Vdd SoC for Internet-of-Things

Abstract

We introduce the Blackghost 1.0 SoC developed in Qualcomm Research, which is our first test chip that paved the road towards the commercialization of the ultra-low-Vdd Blackghost product family. Through seamless integration of many low-power innovations from software, hardware, architecture and circuit, Blackghost delivers unmatched power efficiency for battery-powered Internet-of-Things. It integrates a low footprint sensor/control processor based on ARM Cortex M0, an on-die power management unit with direct battery attach capability, a computer vision classifier processor, a programmable DSP hardware accelerator and an ultra-low-power analog front end on a 3×3 mm2 die in TSMC 28LP CMOS process technology. The computation can operate at near-threshold voltages (<0.6V) at frequencies up to 50 MHz and draws only <9 μA/MHz from the directly attached battery.