Dynamic Virtual Ground Voltage Estimation for Power Gating

With the technology moving into the deep sub-100nm region, the increase of leakage power consumption necessitates more aggressive power reduction techniques. Power gating is a promising technique. Our research emphasizes the virtual ground voltage (VVG) as the key to make critical design trade-offs for power gating. We develop an accurate model to estimate the dynamic VVG value of a circuit block as a function of time after its ground is gated. Experimental results show that the model has less than 1% average error compared with HSPICE results. The CAD tool implemented based on the model has a 100× speedup over HSPICE

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ISLPED
• Authors: Hao Xu, Ranga Vemuri, Wen-Ben Jone
• Keywords: Leakage, Power Gating