HLS-pg: High-Level Synthesis of Power-Gated Circuits

Abstract

A problem inherent in power-gated circuits is the overhead of state-retention storage required to preserve the circuit state in standby mode. HLS-pg is a new design framework that takes power gating into account, from scheduling, allocation, and controller synthesis to the final circuit layout. Its main feature is a new scheduler that minimizes the number of retention registers required at the power-gating control step. In experiments on benchmark designs implemented in 0.9-V 65-nm technology, HLS-pg reduced leakage current by 20.7% on average, with 5.0% less area and 4.1% less wirelength, compared to the power-gated circuits produced by conventional high-level synthesis.