Design Automation Algorithms for the NP-Separate VLSI Design Methodology

Abstract

The NP-Separate design methodology for very-large-scale integration (VLSI) design fine-controls the sizes of transistors, thereby achieving significant power, performance, and area improvement compared to the conventional standard-cell-based design methodology. NP-Separate uses NP cells formed by merging and routing N and P cells having only NFETs and PFETs, respectively. The NP cell formation, however, should be automated to design large circuits using the NP-Separate design methodology. In this paper, we propose design automation algorithms to create NP cells automatically. Simulation results show that the automated NP-Separate reduces the design time significantly, decreases the coupling capacitance by 13%, the critical path delay by 6%, and the power consumption by 10% on average compared to the manual NP-Separate designs. We also propose a detailed placement algorithm to generate more compact VLSI layouts with a little wirelength overhead. The combined effect reduces the coupling capacitance by 10%, the critical path delay by 5%, and the power consumption by 10% on average compared to the manual NP-Separate designs.