16th International Conference on VLSI Design
Resource Allocation and Binding Approach for Low Leakage Power
New Delhi, India
January 04-January 08
ISBN: 0-7695-1868-0
We propose a leakage power minimization approach based on Multi-threshold CMOS (MTCMOS) technology. A clique partitioning-based resource allocation and binding algorithm is presented, which maximizes the idle periods of modules in the data-path. Modules with significant idle times are selectively bound to MTCMOS instances. We developed a parameterizable MTCMOS component library, characterized with respect to sleep transistor width. Using this characterization, the leakage power-delay trade-off is analyzed and optimal sleep transistor widths are identified. For three well known HLS benchmarks, we obtain an average leakage power reduction of 22.44%. The main disadvantage of MTCMOS technology is performance degradation. We present a performance recovery technique based on multi-cycling and introduction of slack. With this technique, the performance penalty reduces to as low as 14.28%. We obtain an average leakage power reduction of 17.46% after performance recovery. The average area overhead incurred due to the introduction of MTC-MOS modules is 10.21%. Results are presented for 0.18?m CMOS technology.