ECE 558 Introduction to VLSI Design

ECE 658 (NTU IC740-A) VLSI Design Principles

Lecture 10 (Fall 2006)  

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Power Estimation and Optimization

• Motivations
• Portability
• Green computing
• Packaging/Reliability
• Types of Power Dissipation
• Dynamic Power Dissipation  CV^2 f
• Estimating transition probability
• Short-circuit currents
• DC current (eg Pseudo-nmos,...)
• Leakage
• Measuring Power in SPICE

• Power Optimization
• Reducing Vdd
• Changing Vthreshold
• Transistor Sizing
• Logic Restructuring to minimize transitions
• Others (lots of recent academic work in this area)

• Case Study:  StrongARM microprocessor (read paper for examples of power optimization in a real microprocessor)

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Coming up in next lecture:

• Sequential Circuits (latches, registers, flipflops, Finite State Machines, clocking).