Improving simulation efficiency for circuit-level power estimation [CMOS]

Radu Marculescu, Cristinel Ababei

Abstract: In this paper we present an effective technique for compacting a large sequence of input vectors into a much shorter one so as to reduce the circuit-level simulation time by orders of magnitude and maintain the accuracy of the power estimates. In particular, we model the effects of complex spatiotemporal correlations and rise/fall time slopes on total power dissipation. As the results demonstrate, large compaction ratios of orders of magnitude can be obtained without significant loss (about 5%, on average) in the accuracy of power estimates.