Technology mapping for low leakage power and high speed with hot-carrier effect consideration

Abstract

Leakage power and hot-carrier effects are emerging as key concerns in deep sub-micron CMOS technologies with respect to their effects on the total power dissipation and reliability of VLSI circuits. Leakage power dissipation is rapidly becoming a substantial contributor to the total power dissipation as threshold voltage becomes small. Similarly, the hot-carrier effect is one of the most significant failure mechanisms in high-density VLSI circuits. In this paper, a technology mapping technique is presented for use in reducing the leakage power dissipation of the circuit by utilizing a dual-threshold voltage cell library and for minimizing the aged delay of the circuit by considering the effect of hot carriers on the cell speeds as the circuit ages. In addition, this paper presents two methods to reduce delay during technology mapping: primary output ordering and pin permutation. Experimental results show that the total power dissipation and leakage power dissipation can be reduced by up to 27% and 52% as a result of the leakage-aware technology mapping and that the circuit aging phenomenon can be reduced by up to 10.6% as a result of hot-carrier-aware technology mapping. Delay was also reduced by up to 13% by using primary output ordering and pin permutation.