Network flow-based power optimization under timing constraints in MSV-driven floorplanning

Abstract— Power consumption has become a crucial problem in modern circuit design. Multiple Supply Voltage (MSV) design is introduced to provide higher flexibility in controlling the power and performance tradeoff. One important requirement of MSV design is that timing constraints of the circuit must be satisfied after voltage assignment of the cells. In this paper, we will show that the voltage assignment task on a given netlist can be formulated as a convex cost dual network flow problem and can be solved optimally in polynomial time using a cost-scaling algorithm when the delay choices of each module are continuous in the real or integer domain. We can make use of this approach to obtain a feasible voltage assignment solution in the general cases with power consumption approximating the minimum one. Furthermore, we will propose a framework to optimize power consumption and physical layout of a circuit simultaneously during the floorplanning stage, by embedding this cost-scalin...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICCAD
• Authors: Qiang Ma, Evangeline F. Y. Young
• Keywords: Feasible Voltage Assignment, Hardware, ICCAD 2008, Power Consumption, Voltage Assignment Task