OPTIMAL-DESIGN OF MACROCELLS FOR LOW-POWER AND HIGH-SPEED

The problem of designing individual macrocells for a library for low p ower and high speed is addressed here, and a new technique for optimiz ation using polynomial approximating functions is devised. In the desi gn of each macrocell, optimality in design is critical and highly accu rate techniques for measuring the performance are required during opti mization, This paper presents methods for accurately estimating the wo rst-case contribution of the power and delay of a cell to a circuit, T he program uses circuit-level simulation to calculate the poser dissip ation and delay of the cell with the highest accuracy. A rationale for using arbitrary degree posynomial modeling functions for area, delay, and poser modeling is presented. The problem is then formulated as a convex programming problem, and a rigorous optimization technique is u sed to arrive at the optimal macrocell.