A revisit to voltage partitioning problem

We revisit voltage partitioning problem when the mapped voltages of functional units are predetermined. If energy consumption is estimated by formulation E = CV 2 , a published work claimed this problem was NP-hard. We clarify that it is polynomial solvable, then propose an optimal algorithm, its time complexity is O ` nk + k2 d ´ which is best so far, where n, k, and d are respectively the numbers of functional units, available supply voltages, and voltages employed in the final design. In reality, considering leakage power the energy-voltage curve is not simply monotonically increasing and there is still no optimal polynomial time algorithm. However, under the assumption that energy-voltage curve is quasiconvex, which is also a good approximation to actual situation, the optimal solution can be got in time O ` nk2 ´ . Experimental results show that our algorithms are more efficient than previous works. Categories and Subject Descriptors B.7.2 [Integrated Circuits]: Design Aids Ge...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: GLVLSI
• Authors: Tao Lin, Sheqin Dong, Bei Yu, Song Chen, Satoshi Goto
• Keywords: Energy-voltage Curve, Functional Units, GLVLSI 2010, VLSI, Voltage