关键词: interconnect bus, dynamic power, wire ordering, wire spacing, nanometer scale process

Abstract: On-chip interconnect buses consume tens of percents of dynamic power in a nanometer scale integrated circuit and they will consume more power with the rapid scaling down of technology size and continuously rising clock frequency, therefore it is meaningful to lower the interconnecting bus power in design. In this paper, a simple yet accurate interconnect parasitic capacitance model is presented first and then, based on this model, a novel interconnecting bus optimization method is proposed. Wire spacing is a process for spacing wires for minimum dynamic power, while wire ordering is a process that searches for wire orders that maximally enhance it. The method, i.e., combining wire spacing with wire ordering, focuses on bus dynamic power optimization with a consideration of bus performance requirements. The optimization method is verified based on various nanometer technology parameters, showing that with 50% slack of routing space, 25.71% and 32.65% of power can be saved on average by the proposed optimization method for a global bus and an intermediate bus, respectively, under a 65-nm technology node, compared with 21.78% and 27.68% of power saved on average by uniform spacing technology. The proposed method is especially suitable for computer-aided design of nanometer scale on-chip buses.

Key words: interconnect bus, dynamic power, wire ordering, wire spacing, nanometer scale process