Apparatus for and method of estimating the quality of clock gating solutions for integrated circuit design

Abstract

A novel apparatus for and method of estimating the quality of candidate clock gating solutions. The quality estimation mechanism of the present invention filters candidate clock gating solutions by estimating a measure of the quality of each candidate solution. The effect of the proposed solution on both timing and leakage power is considered by determining the intersection coefficient for each candidate clock gating solution. The intersection coefficient (IC) is the number of signals shared by both the data logic portion and clock enable logic portions of a proposed clock gating solution. Only those proposed solutions whose IC value is less than or equal to a threshold are considered as possible clock gating solutions. The IC value functions as a reliable predictor of whether a candidate clock gating solution is a good solution without requiring complex heavy analyses that would normally be applied to the final circuit design.

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