Low Power Checks in Multi Voltage Designs

Abstract

Leakage power consumption has been almost a serious problem these days in semiconductor industry. Many low power techniques like multi-voltage, power gating etc. are deployed to improve power saving. Power aware verification hence has become a critical issue now. Static low power verification has been developed to verify that low power architectures are designed in correct approach meeting all electrical rules in SoC. The UPF(Unified Power Format) is the standardized format that has all power intent information and can be used throughout the design flow to ensure that the power specification is intact. Firstly, this paper describes the special cells and its operation used in low power techniques. Secondly it describes the major checks examined at each stage using Synopsys VCLP tool and finally debugging with the tool and conclusion.