Technology Mapping for Low Power in Logic Synthesis

Traditionally, three metrics have been used to evaluate the quality of logic circuits -- size, speed and testability. Consequently, synthesis techniques have strived to optimize for one or more of these metrics, resulting in a large body of research in optimal logic synthesis. As a consequence of this research, we have today very powerful techniques for synthesis targeting area and testability; and to a lesser extent, circuit speed. The last couple of years have seen the addition of another dimension in the evaluation of circuit quality -- its power requirements. Low power circuits are emerging as an important application domain, and synthesis for low power is demanding attention. The research presented in this paper addresses one aspect of low power synthesis. It focuses on the problem of mapping a technology independent circuit to a technology specific one, using gates from a given library, with power as the optimization metric. We believe that the difficulty in obtaining accurate mo..