Analytical models for RTL power estimation of combinational and sequential circuits

In this paper, we propose a modeling technique that captures the dependence of the power dissipation of a (combinational or sequential) logic circuit on its input/output signal switching statistics. The resulting power macromodel consists of a quadratic or cubic equation in four variables, that can be used to estimate the power consumed in the circuit for any given input/output signal statistics. Given a low-level (typically gate-level) description of the circuit, we describe a characterization process that uses a recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm by which such an equation-based model can be automatically built. This approach has been implemented and models have been built and tested for many combinational and sequential benchmark circuits.