Patent ID: 7302652

Claim:
A method of operating a digital circuit, comprising: applying a first input vector to set a first portion of the digital circuit to a power-conservation mode; and applying a second input vector to set a second portion of the digital circuit to the power-conservation mode, wherein the second input vector is independent of the first input vector; wherein applying either one or both of the first input vector and the second vector includes: receiving a circuit definition having one or more primary inputs and one or more primary outputs; defining an input queue including one or more primary inputs; selecting until the input queue is empty a primary input from the queue; searching a circuit definition for any subcircuits driven by the selected primary input, and for any outputs of the subcircuits that are not primary outputs of the original digital circuit, add one or more cluster boundary devices to define a temporary cluster; and determining a leakage control vector for the temporary cluster associated with a temporary leakage value defined as the temporary-best-leakage (tmpBest Lkg) for the original circuitry of the tempo cluster and an extra leakage value (extraLkg) for the added cluster boundary devices.