Excessive p o w er dissipation in integrated circuits causes overheating and can lead to soft errors and or permanent damage. The severity of the problem increases in proportion to the level of integration, so that power estimation tools are badly needed for present-day technology. T raditional simulation-based approaches simulate the circuit using test functional input pattern sets. This is expensive and does not guarantee a meaningful power value. Other recent approaches have used probabilistic techniques in order to cover a large set of input patterns. However, they trade-o accuracy for speed in ways that are not always acceptable. In this paper, we i n v estigate an alternative technique that combines the accuracy of simulation-based techniques with the speed of the probabilistic techniques. The resulting method is statistical in nature; it consists of applying randomly-generated input patterns to the circuit and monitoring, with a simulator, the resulting power value. This is continued until a value of power is obtained with a desired accuracy, at a speci ed con dence level. We present the algorithm and experimental results, and discuss the superiority of this new approach. Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems, 1993.
Burch et al. REF take a Monte Carlo approach, simulating the power of diferent input patterns to a circuit.
A Monte Carlo approach for power estimation
IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems
Computer Science