Circuit enhancement by eliminating long false paths

Abstract

The authors propose to identify and perform logic replacement for a portion; called a segment, of a long path instead of the path itself. This results in less gate and lead duplication and hence reduction in the increase of circuit area. They give sufficient conditions for the choice of segments that can maintain the performance of the circuit. If the restriction on the choice of segments is relaxed then two very effective heuristics are obtained for removing long false paths. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm and heuristics are feasible for large designs and the increase in circuit area is significantly reduced.<>