%0 Journal Article
%T Open SystemC Simulator with Support for Power Gating Design
%A George Sobral Silveira
%A Alisson V. Brito
%A Helder F. de A. Oliveira
%A Elmar U. K. Melcher
%J International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/793190
%X Power gating is one of the most efficient power consumption reduction techniques. However, when applied in several different parts of a complex design, functional verification becomes a challenge. Lately, the verification process of this technique has been executed in a Register-Transfer Level (RTL) abstraction, based on the Common Power Format (CPF) and the Unified Power Format (UPF). The purpose of this paper is to present an OSCI SystemC simulator with support to the power gating design. This simulator is an alternative to assist the functional verification accomplishment of systems modeled in RTL. The possibility of controlling the retention and isolation of power gated functional block (PGFB) is presented in this work, turning the simulations more stable and accurate. Two case studies are presented to demonstrate the new features of that simulator. 1. Introduction Due to the new requirements that the consumer market has been imposing, the semiconductors industry suffered modifications in its manufacturing process. These evolutions introduced great challenges to the design with even more complex chips and high density of transistors in a tiny silicon area, leading to an inevitable increase of power and consequently heat dissipation in the chips [1]. Ahead of this fact, the industry and academic research centers are searching for new techniques to ease the power density problem and enable the development of low power ICs. Techniques for reducing the power consumption can be applied during the development of an IC from the design and specification system to the layout stage [1]. Among the main techniques that can be highlighted are clock gating, multi-Vth, power gating, voltage islands, logic restructuring, and dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS). These techniques can be combined together and require additional features such as power management controllers, cell isolation power domains, and/or retention registers for logical values [2¨C4]. It is common to use Transaction-Level Modeling (TLM) and Register-Transfer Level (RTL) to accomplish the functional verification of complex system on chip (SoC) [1]. Functional verification is a processes used in order to demonstrate that the objectives of the design are preserved after its implementation [5]. In accordance with the state of the art, the power gating verification process has been executed at the Register-Transfer Level (RTL) [6¨C9], primarily, based on Common Power Format (CPF) and Unified Power Format (UPF) [10¨C15]. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate a SystemC simulator, open source,
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijrc/2012/793190/