Motorola Corporation

Susanta Misra

David Theodore Blaauw

Joseph W Norton

Larry G Jones

R Iris Bahar

An integrated circuit, when designed, must adhere to timing constraints while attempting to minimize circuit area. In order to adhere to timing specifications while arriving at a near-optimal circuit surface area, an iterative process is used which selectively increases logic gates sizes by accessing logic gates from a memory stored logic gate library. A circuit representation is read along with timing constraints for circuit paths. Each circuit path in the circuit is processed to find it's actual circuit path delay. A most out-of-specification circuit path (in terms of speed) is chosen in the circuit and a sensitivity calculation is performed for each logic gate in the most out-of-specification circuit path. The logic gate in the circuit path with the maximized sensitivity (sensitivity=.DELTA.speed/.DELTA.area) is increased in size by accessing a larger gate in the library in order to improve speed at the expense of area. The above process continues iteratively until no out-of-specification circuit paths are found.

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Bengaluru, India

Susanta Misra