Cell-based layout techniques supporting gate-level voltage scaling for low power

  • Authors:
  • Chingwei Yeh;Yin-Shuin Kang

  • Affiliations:
  • National Chung-Cheng Univ., Taiwan, PR China;National Chung-Cheng Univ., Taiwan, PR China

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems - System Level Design
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Gate-level voltage scaling is an approach that allows different supply voltages for different gates in order to achieve power reduction. Previous research focused on determining the voltage level for each gate and ascertaining the power saving capability of the approach via logic-level power estimation. In this correspondence, we present cell-based layout techniques that make the approach feasible. We first propose a new block layout style and a placement strategy to support the voltage scaling with conventional standard cell libraries. Then, we propose a new cell layout style with built-in multiple supply rails so that gate-level voltage scaling can be immediately embedded in a typical cell-based design flow. Experimental results show that proposed techniques maintain good power benefit while introducing moderate layout overhead.