SIGNAL-PATH-LEVEL DUAL-Vt ASSIGNMENT FOR LEAKAGE POWER REDUCTION

Along with the fast development of dual-threshold voltage (dual-Vt) and multi-threshold technology, it is possible to use them to reduce static power in low-voltage high-performance circuits. In this paper, we propose a new method to realize CMOS digital circuits that are implemented with dual-Vt technology. We first present a new signal-path-level circuit model which effectively deals with the fact that there can be two threshold voltages assigned to a single gate. In order to assign proper threshold voltage to all the signal-paths in the circuit, our new algorithms introduce the concept of subcircuit extraction and include the hierarchy algorithms which are effective and fast. Experimental results show that our algorithms produce a significant reduction for the ISCAS85 benchmark circuits.