A VHDL Behavioural Synthesis System Featuring Simultaneous Optimisation of Dynamic Power, Area and Delay
Adrian Williams, Andrew D. Brown, Mark Zwoliński · ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) · 2000
Power dissipation has become one of the main concerns of the design industry today. Methods for reducing power consumption tend, however, to be used in an ad-hoc manner. This paper details the incorporation of a power optimisation criterion within the MOODS behavioural synthesis system which features an integrated incremental power estimation capability enabling the system to optimise a design based on independent, user-specified objectives for final area, delay, clock speed, and power consumption. The tool also incorporates a number of architectural features specifically targeted at reducing power which can be included automatically within any given design during synthesis. The resulting system has shown itself to be capable of reducing the energy consumption of a range of benchmark designs by between 3.5 and 7.0 times.