Algorithms for Budget Management with Gate-Sizing and Other Low-Power Applications

This paper presents an overview of budget management and its application to low-power CMOS design. Budget management involves the incremental distribution of delay within a circuit without violating timing constraints. In low-power applications, the assigned budget can be used to reduce combinational circuit area and power dissipation. The zero-slack algorithm for slack assignment (ZSA) and the maximum-independent-set-based algorithm (MISA) for budget management are discussed, while a gate-sizing algorithm for low-power applications of budget management is presented. In gate-sizing algorithms, the template of a gate on a non-critical path is replaced by a smaller template, thereby, reducing its power dissipation. In addition, ultra-low power optimization techniques such as multi-threshold CMOS and transistor stacks are introduced as potential low-power applications for budget management.