Ultra-Low Power Pipeline Structure Exploiting Noncritical Stage with Circuit-Level Timing Speculation

With the increase of the clock frequency and silicon integration, power aware computing has become a critical concern in the design of the embedded processor and system-on-chip （SoC）. Dynamic voltage scaling （DVS） is an effective method for low-power designs. However, traditional DVS methods have two deficiencies. First, they have a conservative safety margin which is not necessary for most of the time. Second, they are exclusively concerned with the critical stage and ignore the significant potential free slack time of the noncritical stage. These factors lead to a large amount of power waste. In this paper, a novel pipeline structure with ultra-low power consumption is proposed. It cuts off the safety margin and takes use of the noncritical stages at the same time. A prototype pipeline is designed in 0.13 μm technology and analyzed. The result shows that a large amount of energy can be saved by using this structure. Compared with the fixed voltage case, 50% of the energy can be saved, and with respect to the traditional adaptive voltage scaling design, 37.8% of the energy can be saved.

Accuracy design of ultra-low residual reflection coatings for laser optics

Refractive index inhomogeneity is one of the important characteristics of optical coating material, which is one of the key factors to produce loss to the ultra-low residual reflection coatings except using the refractive index inhomogeneity to obtain gradient-index coating. In the normal structure of antireflection coatings for center wavelength at 532 nm, the physical thicknesses of layer H and layer L are 22.18 nm and 118.86 nm, respectively. The residual reflectance caused by refractive index inhomogeneity（the degree of inhomogeneous is between -0.2 and 0.2） is about 200 ppm, and the minimum reflectivity wavelength is between 528.2 nm and 535.2 nm. A new numerical method adding the refractive index inhomogeneity to the spectra calculation was proposed to design the laser antireflection coatings, which can achieve the design of antireflection coatings with ppm residual reflection by adjusting physical thickness of the couple layers. When the degree of refractive index inhomogeneity of the layer H and layer L is-0.08 and 0.05 respectively, the residual reflectance increase from zero to 0.0769% at 532 nm. According to the above accuracy numerical method, if layer H physical thickness increases by 1.30 nm and layer L decrease by 4.50 nm, residual reflectance of thin film will achieve to 2.06 ppm. When the degree of refractive index inhomogeneity of the layer H and layer L is 0.08 and -0.05 respectively, the residual reflectance increase from zero to 0.0784% at 532 nm. The residual reflectance of designed thin film can be reduced to 0.8 ppm by decreasing the layer H of 1.55 nm while increasing the layer L of 4.94 nm.

Key technologies and practice for gas field storage facility construction of complex geological conditions in China

In view of complex geological characteristics and alternating loading conditions associated with cyclic large amount of gas injection and withdrawal in underground gas storage(UGS) of China, a series of key gas storage construction technologies were established, mainly including UGS site selection and evaluation, key index design, well drilling and completion, surface engineering and operational risk warning and assessment, etc. The effect of field application was discussed and summarized. Firstly, trap dynamic sealing capacity evaluation technology for conversion of UGS from the fault depleted or partially depleted gas reservoirs. A key index design method mainly based on the effective gas storage capacity design for water flooded heterogeneous gas reservoirs was proposed. To effectively guide the engineering construction of UGS, the safe well drilling, high quality cementing and high pressure and large flow surface injection and production engineering optimization suitable for long-term alternate loading condition and ultra-deep and ultra-low temperature formation were developed. The core surface equipment like high pressure gas injection compressor can be manufactured by our own. Last, the full-system operational risk warning and assessment technology for UGS was set up. The above 5 key technologies have been utilized in site selection, development scheme design, engineering construction and annual operations of 6 UGS groups, e.g. the Hutubi UGS in Xinjiang. To date, designed main indexes are highly consistent with actural performance, the 6 UGS groups have the load capacity of over 7.5 billion cubic meters of working gas volume and all the storage facilities have been running efficiently and safely.