ENERGY MINIMIZATION USING MULTIPLE SUPPLY VOLTAGES

We present a dynamic programming technique for solving the multiple su pply voltage scheduling problem in both nonpipelined and functionally pipelined data-paths, The scheduling problem refers to the assignment of a supply voltage level (selected from a fixed and known number of v oltage levels) to each operation in a data flow graph so as to minimiz e the average energy consumption for given computation time or through put constraints or both, The energy model is accurate and accounts for the input pattern dependencies, re-convergent fanout induced dependen cies, and the energy cost of level shifters, Experimental results show that using three supply voltage levels on a number of standard benchm arks, an average energy saving of 40.19% (with a computation time cons traint of 1.5 times the critical path delay) can be obtained compared to using a single supply voltage level.