Power-Gating Flow Reduces Leakage By 240X

Using their jointly developed MTCMOS power-gating flow, Sequence Design and Korea's Dongbu Electronics, Inc. have demonstrated a 240X reduction in leakage power on a test design. Power-gating design techniques significantly reduce leakage power, which can easily consume up to one-half of a modern SoC's power budget if left unchecked.

Sequence provided Dongbu with an advanced MTCMOS power-gating tool flow incorporating CoolPower, a complete toolkit for full-chip level physical power optimization. Recently, Dongbu successfully fabricated a 130-nm chip produced and optimized by the CoolPower-based flow.

Sequence's power-gating solutions will include full-chip level power-gating analysis, automatic design conversion from non-power-gated designs to optimized power-gated designs, and power-gating verification of rush current and voltage drop.