Low-Power Fanout Optimization Using MTCMOS and Multi-Vt Techniques
Although much research has been done to address fanout optimization problem in VLSI circuits, there is little work on low power fanout optimization. More specifically, since both capacitive and leakage power dissipation of a fanout chain are proportional to its area, it has been widely accepted that power minimization of the fanout tree is equivalent to its area optimization. We have shown that due to short-circuit power dissipation, minimizing area does not necessarily result in a minimized power dissipation solution. In particular, the solution obtained from an area optimized fanout tree may dissipate excessive short-circuit power. We formulate the problem of minimizing the power dissipation of a fanout chain and show how to build a fanout tree out of these power-optimized chains. Additionally, to suppress the leakage power dissipation in a fanout tree, we use multi-channel length (LGate) and multi-Vt techniques. In the presence of multi-LGate and multi-Vt options, we accurately model the delay and power dissipation of inverters as posynomials; therefore, our proposed problem formulation results in a convex mathematical program comprising of a posynomial objective function with posynomial inequality constraints which can be efficiently solved.